Alexander McCall Smith. Heavenly Date (2003)

     Alexander McCall Smith. Heavenly Date (2003) McCall Smith has a deserved reputation as a story teller, but I find his tales more than a little lightweight. He writes for what was at one time a major market, mass magazines. In the 50s and 60s most magazines, even those focussing on niche interests, carried short fiction. Now, only women’s magazines provide a reliable market, and it’s no accident that McCall Smith has a higher status among women readers than among men. These short stories are pleasant entertainments, but no more. A couple disturb a surface that hides darkness, as in Bulawayo, a story of a wife’s decision to abandon her husband for a fling with a boy, but McCall Smith leaves it up to the reader to imagine that darkness. At his best, he displays the same kind of cool ruthlessness as Alice Munro: He just shows you what happens, and how poor or ill-considered choices, or mere accident, can cause catastrophe. This dispassionate view of human frailties lifts him a notch or two above the merely good. **½ (2009)