Have you ever read a soap opera? If not, then this is your book. The writing wasn’t terrible but I expected so much more because of the title. I was expecting something quirky but maybe it was trying too hard to be that as is evidenced by the title. Lesson learned: You cannot declare to be quirky; if you must, then you are not. The title was funny, the content was underwhelming.
Not to be too critical, the story wasn’t terrible but the way that it was put together was. This book was a product of a column the author has in a Scottish newspaper. Apparently, every week he would write a new installment in this series following the lives of affluent Scotsmen in Edinburgh. I suppose it was fine to read them in weekly installments. But, pulling it all together into a book with no extra seaming together of the often-disjoint chapters was the mistake. It was basically a copy-and-paste from the week-by-week articles. There was a flow within each chapter but there was no flow between the chapters to make it a novel.
The stories themselves followed 4 separate tracks. The 1st track followed an arrogant, handsome, status-hungry, 30-something stud-of-sorts who always got his way because of his charm and good looks. However, a turn of events led him to come to terms of who he really is and begin that humble journey to where he needs to be. The theme overall was honorable but the transition was rather superficial, leaving one to wonder if the change is really permanent or temporary. The 2nd track was a young family with an obsequious husband and an overbearing wife. Their young son seemed to be the only sane one who can see clearly what should be what. Of course, being the child, no one listened. Although, the boy did get a listener (finally!) in the psychotherapy sessions his mother forced him to attend, no change really occurred by the end of the novel. The 3rd track followed the thorny but loving relationship between two old friends, a man and a woman. And the 4th track was the newly wed couple. The wife almost lost the groom to a rip tide on their honeymoon.
Really those were the details worth sharing because all of these stories were half-formed. The yeast is still rising and it’s not ready to come out of the oven yet. I believe this is the 1st novel in a series about these Scottish folk so that would account for the lumpy dough that was left rising at the end of the novel. I guess I could find the conclusions to these stories over the rest of the series; the problem is the stories weren’t interesting enough to really care.
