Customer Reviews

Heavenly Date and Other Flirtations

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Unfortunately most other reviewers here were looking for a continuation of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series when selecting Heavenly Date. I am also a fan of the Botswana detective books, but I believe it is important to review this book based on its own merit. The stories are engaging and the characters are well distinguished from one story to the next. Each story gives a concise insight into impulses and oddities found in relationships and personal interactions. It is offbeat, the locations are varied, and the stories range from humorous to slightly bizarre. I found this to be an extremely entertaining book for light reading. So, if you enjoy this author's ability to explore a broad range of subjects as well as his insights into people and relationships between them, give the book a chance. If you are looking more about Precious Ramotswe, wait for the next book in the series.

Alexander McCall Smith is recently best known for his "Ladies No. 1 Detective Series" which takes place in Botswana. And true to those roots, his showcase story, "Bulawayo" does take place in Botswana, but since it is set in 1951, he uses the old name, Rhodesia.

This book is truly masterfully crafted. Smith describes 9 'dates' that men and woman have, and mostly, the problems they encounter in the dating. Only 2 of his stories end 'happily' if you will. The others are virtual disasters. But the beauty of the construction of the book is how the complexity of the dating gets more complicated and the story Smith tells about each has a somewhat different character, although a certain dryness of style that Smith uses is unmistakably done intentionally.

Smith's wonderfully "Freudian" story "Intimate Accounts" is just like reading out of "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life" by Freud himself. And in his final date,"A Heavenly Date" he describes what seems to be, a modern day story of an immaculate conception. Yet there are other explanations, as there are for the Biblical event, the feeling of ethereality is truly entrancing.

The book shows the great talent that Smith possesses for understanding and communicating the thoughts and actions of people. And once again, shows that no matter what culture you are in, the human problems are always much the same, whether they are spoken in English, French, German or Setswana, they are still the same types of problems.

If you're an Alexander McCall Smith fan, you will enjoy this book because no one writes quite like he does. His prose is easy to follow, understandable and fluid. His insights are profound and his storytelling techniques unsurpassed. However, if you think this book is a collection of romantic tales, you will be very disappointed. The stories in this book are on the strange side, some bizarre and dark.

There are nine stories:

Wonderful Date is about a German gentleman of means, Herr Brugli, and his equally financially endowed lady friend, Madame Verloren van Thermaat. The story surrounds events that take place on one of their afternoon dates.

Nice Little Date could've been left out of the book for my money. You can decide for yourself.

Bulawayo is the longest of the stories (about 60 pages) and takes place in Rhodesia. It's the story of a shy young girl who marries an emotionally damaged young man and what happens to them as a result.

Far North takes place in the Cairns area of Australian and is about a young woman who accepts a date with a young man named Bill Jameson. She doesn't know him personally, but is aware of him through work associations. Their date turns out, well, interesting. This one's a bit bizarre, but has its own kind of humor.

Intimate Accounts is just that. It's a psychiatrist telling tawdry tales about some of his patients.

Calwarra is about a young Alice, raised in rural Australia by her father after her mother dies shortly after she turns twelve. Alice turns out very well and, it seems, is artistically talented. A teacher in her school wants her to go to Paris to art school, but Daddy has other ideas. Enter young John Page, number three son of a neighboring farmer.

Fat Date is about the adventures (or misadventures) of two rotund people who are matched through a dating service for fat people.

Maternal Influence. If you have, know of, or can imagine a totally overbearing, self-indulgent mother, you can imagine what life is like for twenty-seven-year-old George who is still under her considerably powerful thumb.

Heavenly Date is a good story with which to end this collection. It certainly has its heavenly elements.

Carolyn Rowe Hill

I fell in love with McCall Smith's luminously written Botswana series so I raced out to buy this book the moment I heard he had written it. How disappointed I was after reading it. This is a collection of short stories based on "love", yet these are largely dark stories where disappointment hangs palpably in the air in many (and unforgivably, in the reader) and the endings seem to end without being planned. There is no feeling evoked for the characters either positive or negative, and despite being well written, these stories do not capture the reader and often end without point. This is quite a departure for readers who have come to know McCall Smith through the Bostwana books. This is not a "keeper" for one's bookshelf and not a book I would recommend buying.

I really enjoyed the varied short stories in this book. Each was totally different from the other.

I disagree with the readers who rated the book poorly. I think they were disappointed that it was so different from No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.

Remember, it's a rare author who can handle different gendres and do them well.

The writer of the popular #1 Ladies Detective Agency has produced another winner. This volume of short stories is like a glimpse into the various worlds of each character. From a husband with intimacy problems to a botched date that ends in death, this book promises to entertain.
Skillfully written, the reader is pulled into each story. In a few sentences, the characters are given life. In a few pages, the story becomes real, with the characters moving throughout.
Much as real life does, these stories alternately take happy or sad turns. Also like life, they don't seem to end at the last page. As a reader, I was left wanting to know more.
For a short story collection, the characters are surprisingly life-like, complete with faults. Heavenly Date showcases stories about the nature of humans and their interaction with each other.
Although the book has a slow start, stay with it. Heavenly Date is a great way to spend an autumn afternoon or to just to pass a few minutes reading. If you like short stories collections or are a fan of Smith's previous bestsellers, this book is a must read.

McCall Smith is one thing in "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series -- Amusing. He is the same in the "44 Scotland Street" series as well as the "Isabel Dalhousie" series. Each is humorous, lovely to read, and full of smiling anecdotes.

It appears, that like most writers, McCall Smith wanted to do something different -- much like a type-cast actor wants to play a role the opposite of his/her type. And, this book is different -- much darker and full of irony which does well resemble Roald Dahl [as so stated on the book cover's review -- so, yes, do judge a book by a cover this time].

Is it good? Yes. Is it like the other books you have read? Definately not. Should you commence reading this with expectations that it will resemble the others? No. And if you do, you will be disappointed as shown by other reviews herein which contrast this to his other successful series.

So, Dahl fans and other readers of dark irony, embrace this book. McCall Smith readers who want to laugh and giggle, you may be well advised to avoid this book.

There's an old rule of thumb in publishing: when an author becomes popular and well regarded, stories that might not have made it beforehand suddenly become "good enough" and are published.

That's what we seem to have here. Some of the stories are good; all show touches of McCall Smith's writing talent; but none stand out.

If this is your first glance at a McCall Smith title, look elsewhere - nearly everything else he's done shows much tighter prose, characters and stories. If you're a fan of McCall Smith, then this is probably worth getting ... or at least giving to another fan.

Don't buy it.

I enjoyed Alexander McCall Smith's dark and wry humor in the Dalhousie series and in his Portuguese Irregular Verbs series (as well as his No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books) but I was so upset after reading this book I threw all of his others out.

The main problem is the second story, "Nice Little Date." While many have argued that it does not glorify child prostitution, I think that it does, in fact, do just that. The protagonist seems assured that he is not really hurting this street hardened child (who is probably 13 or 14 years old -- the man says, "She's 14, but only just."). He trolls a Portuguese town until a man approaches, offering the services of a very young girl; he takes the child out for a meal only on the man's encouragement; he takes the child back to the hotel room tells the child to remove her (his) clothing, without seeming to have any twinges of regret. His sexual desire for this child is explained in detail throughout the story.

The fact that he paid for a girl child and actually got a boy -- is the end of the story. No moral, nothing. In it we see the humanity and desire of the predator. We see his calculations, his enjoyment, while the child is flat -- a hardened street rat for whom this means nothing, according to the story. Only at the end do we glimpse that the child was actually forced, but there is no regret on the protagonist's part other than the fact that the child is the wrong sex.

How better could one glorify a violent act? I can think of no author who has done better at making what is a terrible crime towards children seem innocent, like -- a date. Even the title is disturbing.

I felt so disturbed by this story that I threw out all of my A.M. Smith books and will not purchase another, and I have a mind to send the story (with its myriad details about child prostitution) to Interpol. The last thing we need is a popular author writing about this subject as if it were just another quirky little date -- between a grown man and a 13-year-old child.

Warning! Alert! Alarm! This is most definitely NOT part of Smith's highly enjoyable No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. There seem to be an inordinate number of people who bought this book without noticing that rather key point, and then unfairly blasted it for not being sweet and charming. Originally published ten years ago, the nine stories here are quite different--don't expect wholesome characters, rascally scoundrels, and a generally upbeat tone (even though the jacket copy says "heart-warming"). More accurate is the blurb on the cover which compares them to the short fiction of Roald Dahl.

Each of the stories in an examination of a male/female relationship, and the picture is often not a pretty one. The twenty page opening "Wonderful Date" is probably the most benign of the lot, a sweet story about two elderly aristocratic Swiss on a date who then break out of their formal routine by befriending a young couple. "Nice Little Date" is brief ten page encounter between an American rock star on vacation in Portugal and a young prostitute, and a rather empty meditation on the legacy of colonialism. Next is the longest story, "Bulawayo", fifty pages set in in Rhodesia in the early '60s. It's about a young couple who get married for all the wrong reasons and lead quiet lives of unfufilment. It's well written, but the story it tells about disappointment and longing is a familiar one.

"Far North" is my own favorite of the bunch, twenty pages about a professional woman in Australia who gets stuck on a terrible date. Her resignation is familiar to anyone who's had to see a bad date through to the end, but then the story veers into dark humor and tension. "Intimate Accounts" is a rather weak and self-concious twenty pages of a psychiatric therapist recounting several unusual cases. The touching "Calwarra" is about a young woman in rural Australia who seeks to escape her circumstances and gets bogged down. "Fat Date" is a quick ten page comic sketch of a blind date between two "large" people. "Maternal Influence" is another well-written riff on a familiar theme, this time fifteen pages about a controlling mother who smothers her son--until his spine is stiffened when he meets a nice girl. The final (and title) story injects a dose of magic into the proceedings, where a young Englishwoman spending the summer in Tuscany experiences a divine conception. I didn't particularly care for it, but others might.

The stories are almost uniformly well-written and crisp, however the meditations on dating and mating are fairly commonplace stuff. Smith does it well, but there's not a story here that's likely to linger very long in the reader's memory.