ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH


sex in them but there is a lot of erotic tension, which is far more powerful. And there is never any strong language.’ In The Forever Girl – which dots between


Edinburgh, London, Sydney and Singapore – one scene is, to the attentive reader, hot stuff, with the author gleefully describing it as ‘quite steamy for me’. Yet he depicts this swimming pool encounter between his smitten heroine and the object of her unrequited affections so deftly that Granny would never notice it was there, never mind choke on her pan drop. Sandy takes his readers’ sensibilities seri-


ously. ‘I don’t write for them but I am aware of a certain moral responsibility towards them. I couldn’t have anything bad happen to Mma Ramotswe or Mma Makutsi. It would cause such distress to people all over the world.’ He flinches at the very idea. ‘There are people who live their lives according to Mma Ramotswe.’ When he mentioned, at a Texan literary


lunch, that Mma’s abusive husband might be coming back, the massed shoulderpads in the audience bristled. You will do no such thing, they drawled firmly. In the face of so much animosity and hair lacquer, he backed down immediately. Further discussion produced a compromise, whereby he was permitted to revive the character, but only if some very nasty things happened to him.


It’s clear Sandy’s worlds, real and fictional,


are heavily feminine. He has two grown-up daughters and a female personal support team running the diary and answering his many, many letters. ‘I find the conversation of women interesting,’ he says simply. ‘Casual male conversation is about external things. There are restraints, taboos – men don’t talk about emotions. If you do manage to get men talking amongst themselves about feelings, they don’t like it, they get a bit embarrassed. As a result, a lot of men are very lonely and very isolated.’ Not him, it would seem, surrounded by


purring cats and museum-quality paintings, splitting his time between Edinburgh, Argyll and first-class airport lounges. Should he need to escape from all the oestrogen and talk shop, Ian Rankin’s home is just over the fence. It’s not, he insists, that he is particularly


sensitive and well adjusted. ‘I’m just the same as anybody else, fairly average. It’s the business I’m in – the mind, the world, what people are thinking and feeling. When I go into a restau- rant, I’m interested to know who the other people are, what their story is. That’s part of being a novelist.’ There is an element, he adds, of ‘downright


nosiness’. Given the amount of pleasure he has brought to millions of readers, we can let him off.


Above: With four novels a year to write, as well as several book tours, McCall Smith has an impressively hectic schedule.


FIELD


FACTS The Forever Girl, Alexander McCall Smith, Polygon, £16.99


WWW.SCOTTISHFIELD.CO.UK 45


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