The Isle of Good Karma by Alexander McCall Smith review: 'on enjoyable comic territory'
In his latest standalone novel, Alexander McCall Smith wonders what life would be like if our inner character was externally visible. Review by David Robinson
How old do you feel? Never mind the mirror, the birth certificate and the friends who have known you for decades. If you just go by what you feel, what age are you?
Maeve Macdonald, head of English at a school on Lewis, is actually 42, though inside her own head she is only 26. She has been in the same job for 20 years, and knows that when people look at her, they will only see a spinster schoolmarm in sensible clothing who has never done anything exciting in her life. Looking for adventure, she quits her job and plans to go travelling for six months, starting in Nepal.
Alexander McCall Smith has built a remarkable literary career on writing about goodness in human beings, and this standalone novel is no exception. Maeve is almost pathologically good. We see her in the classroom, an inspirational teacher teaching Shakespeare sonnets and gently inserting the best of Burns into the minds of her young charges. On the croft she shares with her bachelor uncle, she helps with her neighbour’s sheep. She has friends, a full life, and is liked by everyone. “You’ve always thought of other people first,” her uncle tells her.
The first quarter of the book is devoted to establishing this as a fact. Because of it, the son of her neighbouring crofter assures her that he is convinced that she will have a wonderful time in Nepal. He knows these things: second sight runs in his family.
For a long while, everything is peachy. Her uncle is reunited with the love of his life, whom he hasn’t seen since she moved away 40 years ago. Her friend Ella, married to a stick-in-the-mud GP, surprisingly gets the all-clear to join Maeve on the trekking tour. At a Glasgow outdoors shop, she is offered free outfitting in exchange for modelling their “pre-middle-age” lines for people in their early forties.
So far, so magically unrealistic. But when a taxi driver switches off his meter halfway to Glasgow airport for no other reason than that he is in a good mood, and when Maeve gets a flight upgrade to business class (with typical selflessness she gives it to Ella), we know we are in the territory of the absolutely fabulous.
In Nepal, of course, people know what good karma is. They can spot it a mile off in other people - or in Maeve’s case at the hotel reception, in the street and in the Buddhist temples. McCall Smith is on firm and enjoyable comic territory here. What, he is wondering, would life be like if our inner character was externally visible? If our true selves - the people we are in our heads, not in the mirror - could be seen so clearly that even the Kathmandu hotel computer would, without any human intervention, process an automatic upgrade in Maeve’s favour?
READ MORE: Shiver by Brigid Lowe review: 'immersive'
Yet just when McCall Smith has taken the fable almost as far as it can go, Maeve’s luck changes. An injury puts paid to her plans - but not before she has met an handsome American man on the plane to Kathmandu. Not only is he handsome, but he is reading Montaigne’s Essays, which is always a good sign.
Because the handsome American is a professor of something called “civilisation studies”, the story now becomes less like one of the short stories in McCall Smith’s Positive Distraction Podcast (subject: what would life be like if good karma were self-evident?) and more like one of the philosophical discussions that abound in his Isobel Dalhousie series. How much in life is down to luck? Do we get second chances in life? How do we cope with illness, mortality and accidents?
As her plans start to shatter, Maeve’s future looks far less bright than her neighbour predicted back on Skye. But do you really think everything will end unhappily ever after in a McCall Smith novel?
The Isle of Good Karma, by Alexander McCall Smith, Polygon, £18.99
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