Corduroy Mansions is the affectionate nickname given to a genteel, crumbling mansion block in London’s vibrant Pimlico neighborhood, and the home turf of a new cast of captivating, quirky, and altogether McCall-Smithian characters. There’s the middle-aged wine merchant William, who’s trying to convince his reluctant twenty-four-year-old son, Eddie, to leave the nest; and Marcia, the restaurant propriatrix who has her sights set on William. There's also the (justifiably) much-loathed member of Parliament, Oedipus Snark; his mother, Berthea, who’s writing his biography and loathing every minute of him; and his long-suffering girlfriend, Barbara, a literary agent who would like to be his wife (but, then, she'd like to be almost anyone’s wife). There’s the vitamin evangelist, the psychoanalyst, the art student with a puzzling boyfriend, and the Pimlico terrier, Freddie de la Haye, who can fasten his own seat belt and is almost certainly the only avowed vegetarian canine in London.
The comings and goings, the face-to-face and behind-the-back meetings and misses, the in and outs of neighborliness in all its unexpected variations—here is a new world for us to enter, filled with all the life, laughter, and humanity that we have come to expect from Alexander McCall Smith.
BOOK REVIEWS
Media Reviews
"Smith paints with broader strokes than ... in the Ladies' Detective Agency series, and no one character is especially memorable, but the wry humor he elicits ... will bring smiles to the faces of many readers." - Publishers Weekly
"Wry, witty and wise, it's sure to become another best-selling series in McCall Smith's impressive dossier." - Booklist
Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Cloggie Downunder simply delightful Corduroy Mansions is the first of the Corduroy Mansions series by Alexander McCall Smith. This novel is along the same style as the 44 Scotland Street series: it was originally published on the Telegraph.co.uk website in daily chapters. The setting... Read More
Like his 44 Scotland Street series, Corduroy Mansions was written for a British newspaper, and serialized chapter by chapter. The stories about 44 Scotland Street were first serialized in The Scotsman; the stories about Corduroy Mansions were first serialized in The Daily Telegraph (and, at the time of writing, the entire content of the second book in the series, The Dog Who Came In From The Cold is available at The Daily Telegraph in both text and audio.
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