The Bertie Project by Alexander McCall Smith

 

A couple of weeks ago when I wrote about Rivers of London, I said that it was a very British book. Extending that thought, The Bertie Project by Alexander McCall Smith is a very Scottish book, and even more than that, it is a specific subset – it is a very Edinburgh book.

I don’t mean that you can’t enjoy the story if you’re not familiar with Edinburgh – you would enjoy it in the same way as you’d enjoy Rivers of London even if you weren’t familiar with London, because in both cases the authors are skilled enough to give you enough information even if you’re not intimate with the environment.

Having said that, I’m very familiar with Edinburgh. Okay, it was in the 1980’s when I spend four years there as a student, but in a city as old as Edinburgh, while some of the infrastructure is different now, the one thing that doesn’t change is the basic city centre layout – the castle, the Old Town and university, the New Town, the established schools, the museums, galleries and other aspects of Edinburgh’s cultural life. Back in the 80’s all those things created specific idiosyncrasies and to my amusement they are in the Edinburgh of today portrayed in The Bertie Project and I could clearly the Edinburgh voices as if I had never left.

I should say that The Bertie Project is part of Alexander McCall Smith’s Scotland Street series (which is the street where they are set, and one I’ve walked down many times in the past). The series apparently has the honour or otherwise of being the world’s longest serialized novel (according the fly leaf of the book), as each book is serialized in The Scotsman before publication. I’ve not read all the Scotland Street books, but I’ve read a few over the years and certainly enough to know the characters pretty well.

The main characters are Irene and Stuart Pollock, their seven-year-old son Bertie, and one-year old Ulysses, who live in a flat at 44 Scotland Street. Irene would like to think she is a progressive mother who is giving her children the best start in life, and The Bertie Project is how she goes about it – everything from child yoga, to therapy, to Italian conversation, to regular visits to the museums and galleries so she and Bertie can discuss the collections. Stuart on the other hand is a quiet man, a man you might even call henpecked, who would quite like his son to play rugby, have a swiss army knife , go fishing, and god forbid, perhaps take a trip to Glasgow – a concept Irene would view with horror as she is part of that cohort of middle class Edinburgh who can’t imagine living anywhere else except in the gentility of the new town.

In the midst of all this, Bertie is a quiet, compliant boy. He’d also quite like to visit Glasgow and own a swiss army knife, because you never know when it might come in useful. But he knows that’s not going to happen, so he goes to the local Rudolph Steiner school where his classmates rejoice in names like Tofu and Larch and tries to accept that at seven, he doesn’t have the power to push for change.

Having said all that, in The Bertie Project, change is on the horizon for the Pollocks and their friends and neighbours. Stuart’s mother, who has a mutual hatred going with her daughter-in-law Irene is back in Edinburgh to stay, which causes Bertie to think it might be nice to stay with his grandmother for a change. Stuart starts an unexpected friendship in the unlikely venue of Henderson’s Salad Bar (a venerable Edinburgh vegetarian restaurant) which sews the seeds of possible rebellion and Irene is embarrassed that Ulysses is sick every time she picks him up, but finds the baby is delighted to see Bertie’s previous therapist, Dr Hugo Fairbairn, late of Edinburgh and now living in Aberdeen.

On top of all that their friends Matthew and Elspeth move out of the city and have trouble with their Danish au pairs who are more interested in each other than the triplets they are meant to be looking after, while another friend Bruce falls for extreme sports enthusiast Clare, an Australian who is determined to turn him into a hipster whether he wants it or not. And there’s a small matter of defenestration involving one of the residents of the top flat that provides the neighbours with something new to talk about.

The Bertie Project is a delightful way to spend a couple of afternoons. Alexander McCall Smith has a deft hand with character and a bit like Mark Haddon in A Spot of Bother, he is kind to his characters even when he is writing some of their worst characteristics. Irene for example is never less than human. You can see she wants the best for Bertie - it's just that it is her view of what is best and that means she sees her child as a project to be managed.

I said you don’t need to be familiar with Edinburgh to enjoy The Bertie Project and I stand by that. However, it does add a certain joy to have characters go into pubs I know and to walk down streets I’ve walked down a thousand times. The Cumberland Bar (in my day, known as The Tilted Wig), Henderson’s Salad Bar, Valvona & Crolla, a venerable Italian Deli and Café that I used to walk by every day on my way back to my shared student flat in Leith (long before Leith dock area was gentrified), the path along the Water of Leith, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art – they all resonate and have a place in my memory.

I would suggest to anyone who hasn’t read any of the series that it would be best to start with the first book in the series, 44 Scotland Street, as that sets things up, but at the same time, if you happen to come across a copy of The Bertie Project (the 11^th book in the series), it is a wonderfully enjoyable read in its own right and it was just the kind of light read I was after in the very hot weather we’ve been having. Now I need to check whether I’ve still got some of the other Scotland Street books on my shelves, and if not, I may have to remedy that.

The Bertie Project by Alexander McCall Smith was first published in 2016 and my copy was published by Abacus.