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The Resource The quiet side of passion, Alexander McCall Smith

The quiet side of passion, Alexander McCall Smith

Label
The quiet side of passion
Title
The quiet side of passion
Statement of responsibility
Alexander McCall Smith
Creator
Subject
Genre
Language
eng
Summary
As the mother of two small children, Isabel finds herself at the nursery school gate enlarging her circle of friends to include other parents. There she meets Patricia, a musician living in Edinburgh, the mother of a small classmate called Basil Phelps. Patricia takes to Isabel and tries to bring Isabel into her social circle. Isabel is vaguely disquieted by this--there is something about Patricia that she does not quite like, but, with her usual attention to moral obligation, she does her best to be civil and supportive--after all, Patricia is a single mother struggling to get by. Or so one might think; in fact, Patricia seems to live in comfort in a fairly expensive part of town. Isabel hears from her husband, Jamie, that this child is allegedly the unacknowledged son of a well-known Edinburgh organist, Basil Phelps (sr.). Isabel and Jamie are invited to a weekend house-party in a small border town south of Edinburgh. Quite by chance, she happens to see Patricia going into an antique shop there with a man. Isabel does not think much more about that, but shortly afterwards she sees them coming out and she gets a better view of the man's face. He has a strikingly freckled complexion--as does the small boy, Basil (jr.). The organist--the alleged father--has a very different complexion. Jamie discourages Isabel from pursuing the matter, but her sense of justice is pricked, and she decides to look into the matter further. Isabel intervenes in the lives of Patricia and the purported father and comes close to overstepping her own boundaries, as she uncovers a scheme of fake antiquities and illicit trafficking in cultural objects. And she learns about her own misconceptions when her niece strikes up a relationship with a tattoo artist. Isabel is not in favour of tattoos, or of those who execute them, but her assumptions are misguided, and she discovers that the tattoo artist has very fine qualities. (They become friendly, and he even offers to give her a free tattoo--a passage from Plato would do nicely, he says.) In this twelfth full-length installment of Isabel's story, McCall Smith gives his readers what we want--time inside the mind of one
Cataloging source
CaOONL
http://library.link/vocab/creatorDate
1948-
http://library.link/vocab/creatorName
McCall Smith, Alexander
Index
no index present
Literary form
fiction
Series statement
Isabel Dalhousie series
Series volume
12
http://library.link/vocab/subjectName
Dalhousie, Isabel (Fictitious character)
Label
The quiet side of passion, Alexander McCall Smith
Instantiates
Publication
Control code
000045285659
Extent
287 pages
Isbn
9780345808707
Label
The quiet side of passion, Alexander McCall Smith
Publication
Control code
000045285659
Extent
287 pages
Isbn
9780345808707

Library Locations

    • Brodie Resource LibraryBorrow it
      216 S. Brodie St, Thunder Bay, Ontario, P7E 1C2, CA
      48.381806 -89.246333
    • Waverley Resource LibraryBorrow it
      285 Red River Road, Thunder Bay, Ontario, P7B 1A9, CA
      48.436426 -89.223125