Espresso Tales by Alexander McCall Smith
My review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a difficult book to put down. Its daily format encourages that, of course, but even so, it was a joy to read. Its characters are engaging, helping the reader to laugh, cry and a few times even cringe in agony.
Overall, I enjoyed it quite a bit and look forward to the next.
One of my favorite quotes comes toward the end. The discussion was around shared history, the importance of remembering one's past and even one's ancestor's past. And not just events but places, land and circumstances. "We need to remind ourselves", said Domenica. Then she goes further.
We need to renew that bond between ourselves and them, our great-great-grandparents, or whatever they were. It's what makes us a people. It's the knowledge of what they went through, what they were, that brings us together. If we lost that, then we'd be just an odd collection of people living on the same little bit of land. And that would be my nightmare. . . . If our sense of ourselves as a group, a nation, as Scots, were to disappear.
I have the feeling that we've seen the dismantling of civilisation, brick by brick, and now we're looking at the void. We thought that we were liberating people from oppressive cultural circumstances, but we were, in fact, taking something from them. We were killing off civility and concern. We were undermining all those little ties of loyalty and consideration and affection that are necessary for human flourishing. We thought that tradition was bad, that it created hidebound societies, that held people down. But, in fact, what tradition was doing all along was affirming community and the sense that we are members one of one another. Do we really love and respect one another more in the absence of tradition and manners and all the rest? Or have we merely converted one another into moral strangers—making our countries nothing more than hotels for the convenience of guests who are required only to avoid stepping on the toes of other guests?
My apologies for the longish quote. It's only that it is expressed so well. Captures some of my day, I think.
