Windows To The World

CORDUROY MANSIONS

ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH

In this book Smith leaves the Edinburg of Scotland Street and creates the world of Corduroy Mansions. Set in Pimlico, a trendy part of London this is a four-storey building built in the early twentieth century. It was designed in an era when people still talked to one another and all the occupants of the Corduroy flats seemed to enjoy conversing with their neighbors.

On the top floor live William who is a wine merchant, and his son Eddie who was still finding himself, in his early twenties. William had hoped that one day Eddie would move out and get a life instead of hanging around the flat talking in newspaper headlines, which were frequently deriding.   When his father bought a new pair of shoes Eddie would say things like ‘Man Buys Sad Shoes.’

On the second floor are four girls who share the flat. There is Dee, who works for a health food store, Carolyn who is getting her Master’s in Fine Arts and works at Sotheby’s. Jenny is the personal assistant of an oleaginous MP called Oedipus Snark who is disliked by most that get to know him including his own mother. Lastly, Jo from Australia fills out the roster.

The ground floor is  inhabited by Mr. Wickramsinghe; an accountant who is quiet and well dressed but not known well by the others residents of the building.

Marcia

The story opens with William working on a variety of stratagems to get Eddie into his own apartment. He decides to become the part owner of a dog, unusually named Freddie de la Hay. Eddie hates dogs and claims to be allergic to them. Another plot involves possibly having a woman move in with him, preferably one that Eddie can’t stand like Marcia.

Beatrice Snark

As the inhabitants of Corduroy Mansions become known to us it is hard not to become fond of them. They each have quirks that allow Smith to enlarge on the themes of present day conundrums. He has Beatrice Snark the mother of the MP considering writing a book on “The Eyes-Closed Society.” It would be about the way bad behavior in others is increasingly forcing people to pretend that parts of reality did not exist. The theme was that as we become burdened by distressing information such as global warming, growing material need, problems in government, the temptation to turn away becomes greater and greater.

When mentioning wine-merchant William’s beautiful new shoes he reminds us that the pride we had in childhood when we got something new to wear, never really goes away. It is small gems like this sprinkled throughout the entire book that make this book an experience and a heart-warming one at that.

Corduroy Mansions started as a literary experiment,  a serialized on-line book for all to read, much to the horror of some publishers. Quality fiction? Free? On the World Wide Web? This was Alexander McCall Smith's first online novel published in serial form by the Telegraph.  As with most things on the internet, the Telegraph’s digital novel has changed and grown organically over the three years that it has been running. Increasingly, and remarkably, the novel has learnt to march in line with that ever-changing thing that might be best described by the nebulous phrase, an “online community”. These stories are also available in book form, and so far there are three. This one, THE DOG WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD and A CONSPIRACY OF FRIENDS.