Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Weakest of the three but still pretty funny, April 19, 2005
It's not mandatory to read "Portuguese Irregular Verbs" and "The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs" before reading this book, but you might as well, because (a) they're very short, (b) they're very funny, and (c) there are references to stories in the preceding books.
I found this the weakest of the three books about the misadventures of Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld of the Institute of Romance Philology. Perhaps it's because there are only two stories in the novella, so each must be sustained over sixty pages or so. Maybe it's the stories' length that makes them seem so much more improbable than the improbable stories in the other volumes.
Still, the misadventures of Dr von Igelfeld, once again experienced as a result of searching for that elusive recognition he believes he deserves (Did you know he wrote the master work, Portuguese Irregular Verbs? It's the most important philological work of the last one hundred years, you know.), are very amusing. He accepts a visiting fellowship at Cambridge, where a shadowy plot to overthrow the faculty government is brewing, as if worries over his (less-deserving) colleague taking over his office in his absence were not enough. After that, he visits Columbia (the country), where he stumbles into yet another revolutionary plot.
Although I found this book the least amusing of the three Professor Dr von Igelfeld Entertainments, I still laughed out loud. It's light-hearted. It's short. It's just fun.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Academic manners and madness, October 26, 2005
The two chapters of Alexander McCall Smith's At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances tell two almost independent stories featuring Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld--the renowned author of that 1200-page philological masterwork Portuguese Irregular Verbs. When the book opens we find von Igelfeld embroiled in the latest battle in his protracted but unacknowledged war with Professor Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer, von Igelfeld's colleague and nemesis at the University of Regensburg's Institute of Romance Philology. Specifically, von Igelfeld is intent on occupying the most comfortable chair in the Institute's coffee room, a chair which Unterholzer is wont to claim for himself on most occasions: "As the best chair in the room it should by rights have gone to him [von Igelfeld], as he was, after all, the senior scholar, but these things were difficult to articulate in a formal way and he had been obliged to tolerate Unterholzer's occupation of the chair." As it happens, von Igelfeld's successful claiming of the chair on the morning in question--in fact his birthday--leads to his taking a sabbatical at Cambridge University, where he becomes involved in the petty politics of that august institution. Von Igelfeld's experiences abroad--with scheming dons and their lachrymose Master, with an inappropriate Porter, with the University's intolerable toilet situation--leave him more certain than ever of the German's superiority to the Anglo-Saxon.
Not long after his return to Regensburg von Igelfeld sets off on another foreign adventure, as he is to be inaugurated into the Colombian Academy of Letters as a Distinguished Corresponding Fellow. His experiences in Colombia, and in particular at the Villa of Reduced Circumstances of the book's title, are not at all what he expected from his trip, including as they do being held captive by revolutionaries. The Colombians are even crazier, it would seem, than the English. This second story, while amusing enough, is less successful than the first because it is rather too absurd. Smith's comedy of academic manners and madness is at its best when his wry humor settles on the more mundane, when he mocks the pretensions and petty disputes of von Igelfeld's small academic department. (Here, for example, are our hero's reflections on the prospect of a student coming to work at the Institute: "Von Igelfeld was dubious; students had a way of creating a great deal of extra work and were, in general, the bane of a professor's life. That was why so few German professors saw any students; it was regrettable, but necessary if one's time was to be protected from unacceptable encroachments.")
In von Igelfeld Smith has created a charmingly flawed character--pretentious, egocentric, oblivious to the needs of others, yet sometimes capable of nobility. The two stories in this collection are each nearly perfect little gems, almost old-fashioned in their mood and quiet humor. And it may be a small thing, but both end particularly well, with sentences that tie up their respective stories perfectly. I am eager to read Smith's two other von Igelfeld books, and to discover as well what he has waiting for readers in his No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series and his Sunday Philosophy Club Series.
Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Beware-Not a Series for All Tastes, August 29, 2005
Like many readers, I came to the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series through Alexander McCall Smith's charming "Number One Ladies Detective Agency" series. Right off the bat, beware that this series has nothing in common with his beloved detective novels set in modern day Botswana. It is hard to believe that he wrote too such different types of books.
The Portuguese Irregular Verb series of which "At the Villa Reduced Circumstances" is just one book can best be described as a droll send up on the absurdities of academic life. McCall's style can best be described as extremely dry and verging on the absurdist. This type of subtle humor is not for everyone.
The books in the series do not need to be read in order. I would recommend that you start with "The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs", the best book in the series. If you like this type of humor gone onto the other two books. If you like your humor dry and way over the top, this is the series for you.
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