The Right Attitude To Rain
Dec. 1st, 2006 06:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mrdreamjeansOver Thanksgiving weekend, I completed a modest little novel by Alexander McCall Smith titled “The Right Attitude to Rain". (The author also writes a series set in Botswanna that I enjoy.) The protagonist is an attractive 40ish year old woman in Edinburgh, Scotland who edits an academic journal, “The Review of Applied Ethics”. For Isabel, most situations, relationships, interactions between people should be sifted through a prism of practical ethics, moral implications or consequences, philosophical meanings. It’s just how her mind works.
During the course of the book, Isabel falls in love with a much younger man, a 28 year old classical musician. Complicating matters is that this young man used to be her niece’s boyfriend. The other primary relationship in the novel is between a wealthy man in his 50s, disfigured by Bell’s Palsy and a young woman in her 20s. Both are visiting Scotland from Dallas just after becoming engaged to be married.
Thus the book’s primary theme is May / December romances. What’s appropriate? Can such romances be successful? What does either party gain from the romance? Is it anyone else’s business? Are such differences to be judged? Fodder for speculation and gossip?
I found three statements in the book that particularly struck me (or is that struck me particularly:) and wrote them down to remember. Since, I have time on my hands, this is what I was pondering last weekend. If you’re interested, do you agree or disagree with the following statements (and yes, I know there is no context:)
On taking a friendship to the carnal ...
“Why spoil a friendship for the sake of the carnal? And the carnal inevitably spoiled friendships. It took friendships to another land - away from their innocence, to a place from which they could not return to simple friendship.”
On the topic of eye contact ...
“She was sensitive to such encounters, because in her mind they were not entirely casual. By looking into the eyes of another, one established a form of connection that had moral implications. To look at another thus acknowledged one’s shared humanity with him, and that meant one owed him something, no matter how small that thing might be."
On Love ...
"... he had decided that she might grow to love him because love can come if you believe in it and behave as if it exists. That was the case, too, with free will; with perhaps faith of any sort; and love was a sort of faith, was it not?
During the course of the book, Isabel falls in love with a much younger man, a 28 year old classical musician. Complicating matters is that this young man used to be her niece’s boyfriend. The other primary relationship in the novel is between a wealthy man in his 50s, disfigured by Bell’s Palsy and a young woman in her 20s. Both are visiting Scotland from Dallas just after becoming engaged to be married.
Thus the book’s primary theme is May / December romances. What’s appropriate? Can such romances be successful? What does either party gain from the romance? Is it anyone else’s business? Are such differences to be judged? Fodder for speculation and gossip?
I found three statements in the book that particularly struck me (or is that struck me particularly:) and wrote them down to remember. Since, I have time on my hands, this is what I was pondering last weekend. If you’re interested, do you agree or disagree with the following statements (and yes, I know there is no context:)
On taking a friendship to the carnal ...
“Why spoil a friendship for the sake of the carnal? And the carnal inevitably spoiled friendships. It took friendships to another land - away from their innocence, to a place from which they could not return to simple friendship.”
On the topic of eye contact ...
“She was sensitive to such encounters, because in her mind they were not entirely casual. By looking into the eyes of another, one established a form of connection that had moral implications. To look at another thus acknowledged one’s shared humanity with him, and that meant one owed him something, no matter how small that thing might be."
On Love ...
"... he had decided that she might grow to love him because love can come if you believe in it and behave as if it exists. That was the case, too, with free will; with perhaps faith of any sort; and love was a sort of faith, was it not?
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