The Forgotten Affairs of Youth
An Isabel Dalhousie Novel (8)
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The eighth delightful installment in the ongoing saga of the life and loves of Isabel Dalhousie.
As the editor of an applied ethics journal, Isabel Dalhousie is usually tucked away in her editorial office, in the comfortable Edinburgh house she shares with her fiancé and their young son, and does not often meet many fellow philosophers. But while helping in the delicatessen owned by her niece, Cat, she meets Jane Cooper, an Australian philosopher who is spending a sabbatical in Scotland. Isabel learns that Jane needs to find out something about her past. Jane was born in Scotland but taken to Australia as a baby by her adoptive parents. She knows who her mother is, but her father's identity is still a mystery. Can Isabel help Jane unconver this important and potentially unsettling information? And in Isabel's own life, there is the ever-present question of marriage, and also the perennially difficult issue of her relationship with Cat, whose choice of men is as dubious as ever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
You needn't be a series-long admirer of Isabel Dalhousie to be beguiled by this curious philosopher and casual sleuth. In this eighth installment with the ruminating Edinburgh heroine steeped in devoted motherhood, impending marriage, and office and family intrigue it might even help to be a stranger to her more daring exploits; here, No. 1 Ladies' Detectives Agency series phenom McCall Smith has his quirky gumshoe stalking moral intrigue more doggedly than mystery. It's Isabel's mission to help a visiting Australian philosopher find her father after her adoptive parents and birth mother die. The task is deceptively easy and never comes close to matching the confounding mysteries of Isabel's niece's fickle heart, the wisdom of ratting her out to health officials for a batch of toxic mushrooms, the impermanence of the greatest love of her life, or how to raise her adorable toddler with fianc Jamie. Isabel believes only the examined life is worth living, and fearlessly so: "she would never accept things as they were. That was what made her do what she did practice philosophy and what made her... do battle for understanding, for sympathy, for love; in small ways... that cumulatively made a difference." It makes Isabel a heroine worth following, even through this more quiet, reflective foray.
