Hardback blurb: The key to contentment in the Scottish climate is the right attitude to rain - just as in life they key to happiness lies in making the best of what you have.
But in her plain-speaking housekeeper Grace's opinion, Isabel Dalhousie - wealthy, attractive, kind and lonely - does not make the best of what she has; in Isabel's life there is too much thought and not enough action.
Bruised early in love by her faithless Irish husband, Isabel Dalhousie is a connoisseur of intimate moral issues; she edits a philosophical journal and spends a great deal of her time considering how to improve the lives of those around her. There is Grace, whose future she must secure; Isabel's niece Cat, embarking on a new relationship with a dubious workaholic mummy's boy; and even an American couple newly arrived in Edinburgh on a tour - gentle, cultured millionaire Tom, and Angie, his young, pretty troublemaker of a fiancee.
And then there is Jamie, Cat's ex-boyfriend, a handsome, gifted musician fourteen years Isabel's junior, with whom she is slowly and hopelessly falling in love.
Tender and wise, intensely thoughtful and consistently entertaining, The Right Attitude to Rain (2006) is shot through with the compassion and unassuming intelligence that have made Alexander McCall Smith's work so beloved and indispensable across the world.
The interview for The Right Attitude to Rain:
Rating: 3/5
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