Treasures from Alexander McCall Smith, in PIANOS AND FLOWERS, a Book of Stories

Perhaps your high school teacher gave you the assignment: Here's a photo—write a short story based on it. Poets do it often, and even have a name for when the image is actually artwork. The resulting poem is described as ekphrastic.

But when Alexander McCall Smith tackled a similar assignment a year or so ago, he accepted a selection of photos from the archives of The Sunday Times and created a world of affection and often loss around each of them. The result, including some that were published in the newspaper, became his newest stand-alone book: PIANOS AND FLOWERS, BRIEF ENCOUNTERS OF THE ROMANTIC KIND.

Some meander from one person in the photo to the next, tracing the odd connections of our lives; some tell love stories; and my favorite of the 14 of them is "I'd Cry Buckets," which opens with a photo of two young men waking with a pack horse that in turn is carrying a dead deer (or, as it's called in England, a stag). The opening is evocative:

The sweep of the hills. The burn tumbling joyously across the rock. The pony sure-footed but scared of moving water, picking his way gingerly under the burden of the dead stag. And the two boys, who were sixteen, and who were tired from being up on the hill since six that morning when it was still chill and misty and not quite yet light. They had two uncomfortable house to go before they would be back at the lodge.

Bruce, the boy in front, checks that David is all right, in a conversation that stays determinedly on the mundane at first -- until David asks, "Do animals ever think they're going to die?"

The teens continue this pattern of surface discussion with abrupt deep moments, and it gradually becomes clear that they share some secret knowledge of each other, in a protective fashion. Of course they grow up and take divergent paths, only to meet during wartime, aware again of each other's interiors in ways they choose to silence. In tiny details, Smith allows a slow recognition that the bond between the two is deeper than friendship. And trembles under the weight of knowing that death comes to everyone, not just the stag on the ridge.

The wide variety of images, and hence of characters that Smith breathes life into, takes him far deeper than his usual mystery series have time to probe, with a lush descriptive narrative that depends on and interacts with the small photos provided. PIANOS AND FLOWERS evokes a tenderness founded in shared human pain and delight, and demonstrates that the big things in life are grown from the small one, treasured and gathered and finally, in meticulous description, known and loved.

Order two copies: one for your own shelf of Pandemic Relief, and one for a person you care about.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Predictably Charming New Mystery from Alexander McCall Smith, HOW TO RAISE AN ELEPHANT

 [Originally published in New York Journal of Books]

“Mma Ramotswe and her allies practice that love of land and courtesy to each other in gently amusing ways that eventually resolve the mysteries, potential crimes, and tensions of their lives. In a time of pandemic, there could be few more rewarding and soothing tales to read than How to Raise an Elephant.”

AlexanderMcCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series can be relied on for tender and kind surprises, and the reliability of love and trust among the main characters. Of course they have their flaws—Precious Ramotswe, who leads the unusual detective agency in Bostwana, is a woman of “traditional build” and careful attention to the guidance found in her detection manual written by Clovis Andersen. She can thus be a little short-sighted, and a bit hard-wearing on her small but practical van. Her assistant, Mma Makutsi, a secretarial school graduate with big dreams, tends to be suspicious and not very generous in her assessments of potential clients. And then there is Charlie, the brash youth employed parttime by the Mma Ramotswe and parttime in the adjoining car repair business of her husband Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.

In How to Raise and Elephant, the first mystery provided is fairly readily solved: The bent tailgate of the detective agency’s van and its powerful earthy scent after Charlie borrows it lead directly to the apprentice’s use of the van to transport a baby elephant. But Charlie’s neighborhood is not at all suitable for a growing elephant, even though it appears to consider him its mother.

There had been many occasions in the past when they had been obliged to clear up some mess left by Charlie. They could remain uninvolved if they discovered somebody else was looking after an elephant—such an elephant would be none of their business—but there was a sense in which any elephant in Charlie’s keeping was their problem, or soon would become just that.

And negotiating a future home for the friendly but ungainly beast requires all of the skills in courtesy and gentle teasing that Mma Ramotswe can summon.

Meanwhile, the detective agency owner has a family-related plea for financial assistance that Mma Makutsi mistrusts. Whether to believe the sad tale of a relative and donate accordingly requires attentive investigation, according to the best principles of detection.

Alexander McCall Smith’s storytelling provides great charm, as he unravels the experience and thinking of his rural but increasingly wise protagonists. A classic example is how Mma Ramotswe ponders the role of royalty, including the Queen and the Queen’s son, Prince Charles:

And there was Prince Charles, who she knew loved Bostwana. When he came again to visit the country, she would try to invite him for tea. He would be too busy to come, of course, and there were people around him who would fend off invitations, but she knew they would have a great deal to talk about: about the rains and the crops; about looking after the world; about remembering when all is said and done, we lived on the land and had to give the land the love that it needed if it was to continue to provide for us.

Mma Ramotswe and her allies practice that love of land and courtesy to each other in gently amusing ways that eventually resolve the mysteries, potential crimes, and tensions of their lives. In a time of pandemic, there could be few more rewarding and soothing tales to read than How to Raise an Elephant.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.