Review of PIANOS AND FLOWERS: BRIEF ENCOUNTERS OF THE ROMANTIC KIND by Alexander McCall Smith

 2.5 Stars

I requested a digital galley of this book because it employs an exercise I used when teaching creative writing.  Unfortunately, this collection of vignettes based on old black-and-white photographs left me unimpressed.

The author used old photos and imagined the lives of the people captured.  The subtitle suggests that there should be romance in each, but that is certainly not the case.  For example, “Pogo Sticks and Man with Bicycle” imagines how Francis Crick and James Watson, while working on building a model of DNA, might have examined the spring in a pogo stick and seen a double helix.  Another episode entitled “Urchins” imagines the lives of the boys captured in a 1920 photo; none of them has a love story of any note.

Because the pieces are so short, there is little depth.  In “Urchins” the life stories of four boys are told.  There are long sections of prose giving mundane details, so there is more background than actual action.  I guess some of the vignettes could be considered charming, but they are forgettable.

Perhaps the stories are intended to be read one at a time.  Because I read them in a couple of sittings, I noticed considerable overlap.  Margaret in “Sphinx” has a landlady who is “the widow of a dentist” while Merlin in “Iron Jelloids” lives in the house of “a police sergeant’s widow.”  Both landladies are very kind to their tenants.   In “Blackmail” there’s a dishonest “financial clerk” and another one in “Pogo Sticks and Man with Bicycle.”  Margaret in “Sphinx” is raised by an aunt who is a “district nurse”  while in “Duty” “a theatre nurse” helps raise her brother’s twins once he is widowed.   Student nurses appear in at least three stories.   In “Sphinx” Margaret “drifted into something, in the way in which we are all capable of drifting into things, without any conscious assertion of will, any firm choice, because it is easy and we feel sorry for people and we cannot find a simple way of avoiding their emotional claims.”  In “Duty” twins drift into relationships though they love someone else. 

Coincidence and unbelievable events are used liberally.  Three sisters play matchmakers to two teachers and then years later unknowingly appear in a photograph with these teachers?  Tea with St. John’s Wort cures depression and iron pills bestow confidence?  In a double ceremony, a minister marries the wrong women to the wrong men, but the brides and grooms don’t notice the mistake?

The author is prolific and popular, so my review will probably not reflect the views of the majority.  I just expected more and was disappointed. 

Note:  I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.