Corduroy Mansions (Corduroy Mansions 1) [Import] [Hardcover]

Alexander Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2009 | Series: Corduroy Mansions 1

Following on from the huge success of the "44 Scotland Street" series, Alexander McCall Smith 'moved house' to London's Pimlico and into his brand new daily novel, "Corduroy Mansions". The building itself - described in a guide to the architecture of the area as 'a building of no interest whatsoever' - is believed to have been built as an asylum, or possibly a school, or maybe it was a mansion block - nobody is very sure. In fact, nothing of its history is known, although it does have some nice Arts and Craft features. At the moment it is inhabited by an assortment of characters - including amongst others a literary agent, a wine merchant, one accountant, possibly the first ever nasty Liberal Democrat MP and his long-suffering PA, and a small dog in his prime. At least one character is on a voyage of self-discovery, which has taken him to Cheltenham so far. Although Corduroy Mansions is a nickname, it is now recognized by the Post Office.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Alexander McCall Smith on Corduroy Mansions

When I started writing serial novels in newspapers six years ago, I had no idea that the whole business would rapidly become addictive. My initial foray into this genre of fiction began after a conversation with Armistead Maupin, author of Tales of the City, which was a saga of life in San Francisco that ran to several volumes. The idea was implanted of starting a daily novel set in Edinburgh, and a few months later I embarked on 44 Scotland Street. After five years of producing a chapter a day for six months of the year, I decided to give Edinburgh a rest for a while and start a tale set in London. Corduroy Mansions, published each day in the online edition of The Daily Telegraph, was the result.

Like any saga, there is a story--but it is not a complicated one. These stories are character-based: what interests me is what makes the characters tick rather than intricate and potentially confusing plots.

There are quite a lot of characters in the story, many of them occupying a rather run-down block of flats in Pimlico that gives its name to the series. We are introduced to William French, a wine merchant who has just turned fifty, but who is in denial about that. He is a widower with a dreadful son, Eddie, who sees no reason to leave a comfortable home and set up independently, in spite of every encouragement by his father. William is admired by Marcia, a caterer who would like to marry him--or anybody really.

William lives at the top of the building. On the floor below is a shared flat lived in by four young women. One of these, Dee, runs a vitamin and health food shop not far away and is a keen exponent of alternative medicine in its various guises, and in particular of colonic irrigation. Then there is Caroline, who is studying for a master’s degree in fine art at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art.

Caroline is fond of James, who is doing the same course as she is. James is very artistic, with a particular interest in the work of the French artist, Nicolas Poussin. James likes Caroline a great deal, but is unsure as to what his real proclivities are. Caroline is optimistic that she can confirm him in the direction she would like him to take, that is as one who is interested in women, but will she succeed?

William, at least, is quite unambiguous in that department: he wants to find a woman. His long-time friend Marcia, however, thinks she just may be his match. In the meantime, William has for company a remarkable dog, Freddie de la Hay, a Pimlico Terrier.

Then there is Oedipus Snark, a Liberal Democrat MP. He is so unpleasant that his mother, Berthea Snark, is writing his unauthorized biography in which she has the intention of dishing every bit of dirt on her son that she can muster. Berthea is the sister of the mystically-inclined Terence Moongrove, an exponent of Bulgarian sacred dance and the unexpected driver of a Porsche.

That is probably all that one needs to know. But even if one cannot be bothered to absorb even those few facts, the story will, I hope, be abundantly clear. This is light social comedy, I suppose, but while I admit that the whole point of the exercise is for the reader to have fun, I hope in this story, nonetheless, to say something about how we live and about how finding love and meaning in the very small things of life may transform us, may make our ordinary lives more bearable.

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--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Set in present-day London, Smith's charming first in a new series offers a variation on his 44 Scotland Street books, centering on the eccentric occupants of Corduroy Mansions and their offbeat doings. William French, a wine merchant, hopes to force his son, Eddie, who refuses to take his hints about sharing a flat with other 20-somethings, to leave the nest by getting a dog whose presence in their apartment he expects will drive Eddie out. William's neighbors include Dee, who works at a vitamin shop and believes a coworker needs to purge his system of excess sodium, and her roommate, Jenny, who works for an odious MP, Oedipus Snark, who treats Jenny like dirt. Smith paints with broader strokes than in his subtle and often moving No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, and no one character is especially memorable, but the wry humor he elicits from the collisions of lives and their repercussions will bring smiles to the faces of many readers.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Polygon Press; First U.S. Edition edition (August 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1846971217
• ISBN-13: 978-1846971211
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,115,546 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alexander McCall Smith was born in what is now Zimbabwe and taught law at the University of Botswana. He is now Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. He has written more than fifty books, including a number of specialist titles, but is best known for The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, which has achieved bestseller status on four continents. In 2004 he was awarded British Book Awards Author of the Year and Booksellers Association Author of the Year. He lives in Scotland, where in his spare time he is a bassoonist in the RTO (Really Terrible Orchestra).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

141 of 156 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars McCall Smith: the Dickens of the 21st Century, July 15, 2009

By 

C. Catherwood "writer" (Cambridge UK and Richmond VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Corduroy Mansions (Corduroy Mansions 1) (Hardcover)

Whenever I tried on Wikipedia to say that Alexander McCall Smith was the Dickens of the 21st century, some officious editor would complain and say that McCall Smith is no Dickens. Well, in a way that is true: CORDUROY MANSIONS is far more fun to read and not even remotely depressing, which Dickens can often be.

And even the most fastidious Wiki editor had to admit that McCall Smith has revived the serial novel, the form that Dickens made so famous in the 19th century. First we had the magnificent series set in Edinburgh (44 Scotland Street) and now we have the equally wonderful and totally enjoyable CORDUROY MANSIONS.

The characters are as brilliantly drawn as always and are just as funny, poignant, thoughtful and superbly observed as ever. We have got to know a lot of wonderful new people through the serialization in the Daily Telegraph and now we have it in permanent book form.

(And some of the characters are real people, as at least one chapter shows....)

One final thing: ALL McCall Smith's novels are as good as each other: this really ought to have the same sales as the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series, as it is every bit as enjoyable and fun to read.

I will be buying several copies of this and giving them to friends - why not do the same? Summer is coming, and this is the ideal summer present to have as holiday reading.

Christopher Catherwood (author of WINSTON CHURCHILL: THE FLAWED GENIUS OF WORLD WAR II)

90 of 103 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars McCall Smith's formula is still good, but a bit stale: 3.5 stars, August 15, 2009

By 

S. McGee (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Corduroy Mansions (Corduroy Mansions 1) (Hardcover)

What I relished in the 44 Scotland Street series of 'serial novels' published by Alexander McCall Smith was the uniqueness and quirkiness of his characters and the gentle pace of the narration, where life simply happens, the way most of us experience it in fact (as opposed to the frenetic pace of thrillers or the intense drama of romantic novels.) But after four or five volumes of that series, the formula had already begun to wear thin. Ultimately, I like anything I read -- fiction or fiction -- to have some kind of point (the eggheads refer to it as a narrative arc) and there simply isn't one here. It's not impossible to achieve this in a serial novel (after all, Dickens managed it with aplomb), but McCall Smith is flagging.

This book simply transplants the 44 Scotland Street formula to the streets of London; specifically a particular street in Pimlico, where stands a house transformed into a block of flats that is known to one and all as Corduroy mansions. Anyone who has already read McCall Smith's other serial novels (which I expect will be 95% of the potential readers for this book) knows what happens: the building's various inhabitants interact with each other and with those outside its walls. (For instance, one of the girls sharing one of the flats is the personal assistant to the only nasty Liberal Democrat member of Parliament, rejoicing in the name of Oedipus Snark; one subplot involves what happens to Oedipus's mother and her brother, who rejoices in the name of Terence Moongrove; another follows his girlfriend, Barbara Ragg, after their breakup.)

But the plotlines stutter along at best, leaving the reader dangling. For instance, we learn that Barbara's new lover has a traumatic event in his past -- he tells her half of the story but the book ends without the other half, while Oedipus's mother discusses the nature of her literary plans but that's about it. Ultimately the number of loose ends of that kind, combined with the frequent digressions (one of Barbara's co-workers is discussing a real plot-related element with his wife, and suddenly the two start pondering the nature of crimes against others and forgiveness -- "Mr. Blair said sorry to Ireland, but he was the first British leader to find it possible to do that") become increasingly irritating. The philosophical musings that work in McCall Smith's series of serial-style novels featuring Isabel Dalhousie work because the nature of her profession is philosophy; these lofty internal monologues and ramblings don't work, particularly when the extend for pages on end.

I've rated this 3.5 stars, because McCall Smith has an eye for a goofy character and because I think it's great to have this approach to storytelling still around. (He's also, at heart, a good writer with an ear for dialogue.) But while writing about Botswana in this manner can work for readers simply because most of us aren't familiar with daily life there (see his Number One Ladies Detective Agency series), the same isn't true of writing about daily life in London. His characters have begun to feel precious and neither they or their various predicaments felt real to me; when that happens, I don't care about what happens to them or the story as a whole. I began the book with hopes that by shifting his geographic focus, McCall Smith had rediscovered his storytelling prowess, but within the first few dozen pages, hope was the only thing that kept me turning the pages. When feel relief rather than sadness on finishing a book, I know that it's at best a three-star read.

Recommended only for the author's die-hard fans. After this one, I'll be getting his books in paperback or from the library.

29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars 44 Scotland Street moves south of the border, October 24, 2009

By 

Kerry Raymond "twin parrots" (Brisbane, Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Corduroy Mansions (Corduroy Mansions 1) (Hardcover)

Corduroy Mansions appears to be the start of a new London-based serial story, similar to McCall Smith's 44 Scotland Street series (based in Edinborough).

Once again we are introduced to a group of interesting characters who live in the various households of the building and their loves and lives both within and beyond the building. Well, sort of. Some of the residents get very little attention and remain very shadowy characters in the book. Some get better fleshed out, but really much of the book is devoted to the loves and lives of people who don't have any connection to Corduroy Mansions.

Much of the book is actually about the remarkably named Liberal Democrat MP Oedipus Snark (whose personal assistant lives at Corduroy Masions so there is some conection) along with Snark's mother, Snark's uncle, Snark's girlfiend and Snark's ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend, whose connection to Corduroy Masions is quite unclear. Perhaps in subsequent books these characters will become more enmeshed into the world of Corduroy Masions, but at the moment, it feels almost like two novels in the one book - "Corduroy Mansions" and "The Relatives and Friends Of Oedipus Snark".

If you are already an Alexander McCall fan, by all means read this book. If you are new to Alexander McCall fan, try 44 Scotland Street first and wait and see if this new Corduroy Mansions series develops better than it started.