Truth, lies, love, loss, words and judgment. Those are just a few things that Isabel Dalhousie ponders and struggles to understand throughout the 5th book in the Isabel Dalhousie series by Alexander McCall Smith. The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday follows Isabel through her relationship with her much younger boyfriend Jamie, their son Charlie, her niece Cat and the newest moral and philosophical dilemma of her life – trying to figure out if a well-renowned doctor was really at fault for a patient’s death in his clinical trial. It might not seem that much of a dilemma to the average reader but to the reader who has followed Isabel from the first book, The Sunday Philosophy Club, it is one that she feels morally obligated to be involved in simply because she was asked.
Isabel Dalhousie is a 40-something philosopher, editor of the Review for Applied Ethics journal, mother, girlfriend, aunt and as some say, meddler. She loves to be involved in things that have absolutely nothing to do with her but have everything to do with philosophy and life. Over the course of her journey’s, Isabel has gotten herself mixed up in the afterlife, love with a younger man, past lives, memories from a transplant, and many more. As mentioned earlier, in this particular journey Isabel is asked to put herself in the middle of a moral and legal issue: did a doctor falsify his findings in a medical study and in so doing, ended up killing a person in the trial. Truth and lies are at the core of this issue for Isabel and because of her involvement in this issue she begins to question the truth/trust and eventually lies in her own life, specifically her relationship with her boyfriend (much younger than herself) Jamie.
This book makes it to my most favorite list without a doubt and is the 2nd favorite in this series (Friends, Lovers and Chocolate is my favorite). When Isabel brings trust and lying into her personal life, it brings a sense of humanity to her that you sometimes forget she has when she goes on about her philosophy driven life. This book has the best of both worlds – easy and quick to read yet thought-provoking in only the way a philosopher can me you think. McCall Smith has Isabel stop everything she is doing to think about the moral implications of something and the reader does the same. Most times without even realizing it.
Only one thing in the entire series has annoyed me and that is Cat, Isabel’s niece. At first she was the late 20-something niece who had the worst luck in finding a man to settle down with for more than a few weeks. But as the series went on, I saw that it was really her lack of commitment towards another person that left her alone and the fact that she would pick a man simply on his looks. Isabel has a very interesting theory on this:
“She understood that everyone had their preferred physical type, but she found it odd that this could be the sole factor in somebody’s choice….The problem was that the search for beauty was something that we were destined to conduct, in spite of ourselves; we wanted to be in the presence of beauty because somehow we felt it rubbed off on us, enriched our lives, made us more attractive. This was felt even by those who themselves were attractive; beauty sought beauty.”
Some people want to look beautiful so they pick their friends and lovers according to how they look. Isabel finds that hard to imagine because that is not at all how she chooses Jamie. But getting back to Cat as the series goes on, she grows the attitude of feel sorry for me because I can’t find anyone and the one person who I thought I saw myself with my aunt took away from me (yes she dated Jamie and he was in love with her but she wasn’t with him and dumped him accordingly). She never wanted a life with him but the minute that Isabel “got” him she was mad and felt hurt that her aunt would take “her Jamie” away. All I want to do is slap her over the face and tell her to grow up. She is the one who let him go. And the heart wants what it wants. You can’t help who you fall in love with. It just happens. Even Isabel admits that.
With its thought-provoking life lessons and moral implications, Comforts of a Muddy Saturday keeps the reader enthralled in the life of Isabel Dalhousie and keeps you coming back for more philosophical lessons.
My grad, 5/5 as always!
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