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130 of 132 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A departure for Alexander McCall Smith... and an enjoyable, gentle read, February 22, 2009
Alexander McCall Smith has built a following based on his serial novels -- the Mma Ramotswe mysteries set in Botswana as well as the two series of more general fiction set in his home town of Edinburgh. In those, each chapter is essentially a self-contained story, each of which builds on the events in previous chapters and creates a narrative arc leading toward the book's conclusion. In "La's Orchestra Saves the World", the author has taken a much more conventional structure, although his main character, La herself, is anything but a traditional heroine, although in her own way she is just as quirky as any Botswanan sleuth or 40-something Edinburgh bluestock philosopher. La, the eponymous heroine, after a series of events, is living in the English countryside, somewhat rootless and aimless, when World War 2 breaks out. Her need -- never strongly felt -- to seek a place for herself gives way to a quest to make herself useful. She cares for a local farmer's hens, creates a garden -- and, to her own astonishment, creates a ramshackle kind of orchestra made up in part of the airmen from a local RAF base. This is not a war novel in any sense; the conflict itself is distant from the day to day lives of La and her neighbors, even as they must cope with everything from the deaths of those they know to the vicissitudes of rationing. The style, plot and character development are as old-fashioned in feeling as La's proper name -- Lavender. But there is a hint of mystery and even tension when La comes on the scene. A Polish airman -- or is he? -- he plays the flute in La's orchestra, and helps out on the farm. But not everyone is as drawn to Felix as is La, and even she realizes there are some unanswered questions about his background... Ultimately all is revealed, but this is not a conventional love story, either. While this book will probably appeal to those who enjoy reading the musings of Isabel Dalhousie in Alexander McCall Smith's Sunday Philosophy Club series, fans of the Ladies No. 1 Detective Club stories will find it much less vibrant and forceful, either in tone or characterization. The plot meanders gently to what some may find a disappointing conclusion, albeit one that makes sense of what has gone before. It's an oddly passive story, albeit one that deals in a quiet way with all the major themes of life: love, war and a quest for identity and purpose. Those with the patience to keep reading will find much that is rewarding in a gentle kind of way, particularly in La's quest to create sense of meaning from what often seems to her to be a life that too detached.
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57 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Pleasant but nothing really happens, April 9, 2009
As a fan of Alexander McCall Smith, I rather eagerly picked up "La's Orchestra Saves the World", which is a one-off novel and not part of any of his regular series (No 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Scotland Street). However, I was disappointed with the novel. It's not McCall Smith's finest by any means. The book opens well, 2 brothers return to the village where La used to live and the ensuing conversation with the locals tantalises us with hints about La, without revealing much. You read on feeling that an interesting story is about to unfold. However, the story of La's life is characterised by being largely uninteresting. La drifts along, mostly taking the path of least resistance until other people or external events force her to take a new direction. Some phases of La's life are dealt with in incredible detail and various future directions in the storyline seem to be introduced but they are never progressed. Then towards the end of the book I felt that some publisher's deadline must have been pressing and La's life is suddenly compressed into a quick sequence of events and then the book finishes. As I turned the last page, I was unclear in what way La's Orchestra had saved the world? Indeed, the story of the orchestra is a relatively small part of the book. La lived a small life that briefly raised morale in a small way in a time of war. She had a long-term love affair that seemed to rely on chance rather than any effort by her to develop the relationship. I fully believe it is possible to write an interesting story of an ordinary life (and the author does so in many of his novels). But this story didn't seem to achieve it. I am curious if the novel was inspired by a real person known to the author and this book was intended as some kind of homage. It hasn't turned me off Alexander McCall Smith. I'm prepared to let an author experiment with a new style, but I think it was a failed experiment in this case.
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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A quiet book about momentous time, September 1, 2009
In his new stand-alone novel La's Orchestra Saves the World, Alexander McCall Smith tells the story of La (Lavendar) Stone, a Cambridge graduate who marries her sweetheart because it's the thing to do and subsequently finds herself falling in love with him. But her life doesn't unravel quite as she might have expected. World War II intervenes, for one thing, and La finds herself living in a small village in Suffolk, tending hens as part of the war effort and conducting an amateur orchestra by way of keeping up morale in the village and on the nearby RAF base. I had every intention while reading the book to express surprise in my review that the author should have tacked onto his story such an unnecessary and uninteresting first chapter: it's set probably in the present day, or close enough, and introduces La as someone already dead, her orchestra a distant memory. Her life story, then, is a reminiscence. I dislike having a story framed in this way as it distances one from the main narrative. And I suppose it's an unwelcome reminder of the ephemerality of a single life. It tells you the end of the story--she's dead; it's all finished now one way or the other--before it even begins. That said, when you get to the last pages of the book, the first chapter suddenly makes sense, so it is not just an unnecessary appendage after all. I still don't like it, though, and I don't like the last chapter, either. It would be a slightly different book--but quite possibly a better one--if the first and last chapters were simply cut from it and the rest left as it stands. The last sentence of the book's penultimate chapter would even serve very nicely as this revised story's conclusion. Still, La's Orchestra, a quiet book about momentous times, is yet another worthy addition to McCall Smith's extensive oeuvre. -- Debra Hamel
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