The Careful Use of Compliments
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The Careful Use of Compliments is the fourth book in The Sunday Philosophy Club Series by Alexander McCall Smith.
Plot
After her son, Charlie's, birth Isabel feels that her life has hit a happy (or happier) patch. Deciding that she may bid for a painting at auction, she visits the showroom, where she has arranged to meet Jamie (her son's father). Jamie proposes but Isabel says that she thinks they should wait, half-hoping that Jamie will press his case. She is a little disappointed when he agrees with her, but accepts that they have made the correct decision.
To her distress, she learns that the editorial board of the Review of Applied Ethics, which she edits, has decided to replace her, an action that she effectively reverses although not without her usual philosophical qualms and musings.
Meanwhile, she becomes interested in the life and recent death of Andrew McInnes, an artist most of whose paintings feature the island of Jura and who was lost in a boating accident there some years previously. Travelling with her fiancé, Jamie, and Charlie to the place of his loss she discovers new information about a more recent painter who was painting similar scenes. Her investigations into a possible art fraud unearth something quite unexpected.
Philosophical Themes
At the beginning of the novel, Isabel's baby is three months old. Reflecting on philosophy and infancy, she muses that Immanuel Kant, "although he would have acknowledged, of course, that each baby should be treated as an end in its own right, and not as a means to an end," would most likely have found babies "too irrational, too messy," whereas her fellow Scot David Hume "would have found babies good company because they were full of emotions, unexpressed perhaps, or made known only in the crudest manners, but emotions nonetheless."[1]
Isabel clearly likes Hume, both as a philosopher and as a person. He was, she recalls, known as "the good Davey".[1] She is therefore shocked when a philosopher she dislikes dismisses Hume with the remark that "there's so much more to be learnt about our emotions" from magnetic resonance imaging. "Isabel stared at him incredulously. This was pure nonsense."[2]
One of Plato's most famous metaphors has a particular significance for Isabel: "There were two horses in the soul, she thought, as Socrates had said in the Phaedrus — the one, unruly, governed by passions, pulling in the direction of self-indulgence; the other, restrained, dutiful, governed by a sense of shame."[3] Torn between seeking petty satisfaction and being high-minded in her dealings with those who had tried to oust her as editor of the Review, she thinks: "Plato's white horse and dark horse. She closed her eyes. Revenge was sweet, but it was wrong, and she should not repay them in the coin they had used on her. No, she should not." Her lawyer senses that he has "just witnessed a great moral struggle."[4]
Caught in another of her moral quandaries, Isabel briefly considers "the attractions of disengagement, of a policy of not worrying about the world." But then she muses that, if one looks hard enough, one will probably find that the "big issues" that disengaged people ignore have "merely been replaced by small concerns that can be every bit as pressing. The successes of a football team — or, more pertinently, its failures — could be the cause of a good deal of anguish; arguments with neighbours, worries over money — all of these could weigh as heavily as the greater matters. So being disengaged was more of an apparent solution than a real one."[4]
Reception
Kirkus Reviews said: "Emphasizing, as usual, ethical quiddities that most mysteries either ignore or take for granted, Smith produces another absorbing case in which Isabel doesn't so much detect as interfere in a quietly masterful way more frivolous sleuths can only envy."[5]
References
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- t
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Detective Agency
- The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (1998)
- Tears of the Giraffe (2000)
- Morality for Beautiful Girls (2001)
- The Kalahari Typing School for Men (2002)
- The Full Cupboard of Life (2003)
- In the Company of Cheerful Ladies (2004)
- Blue Shoes and Happiness (2006)
- The Good Husband of Zebra Drive (2007)
- The Miracle at Speedy Motors (2008)
- Tea Time for the Traditionally Built (2009)
- The Double Comfort Safari Club (2010)
- The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party (2011)
- The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection (2012)
- The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon (2013)
- The Handsome Man's De Luxe Café (2014)
- The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine (2015)
- Precious and Grace (2016)
- The House of Unexpected Sisters (2017)
- The Colours of all the Cattle (2018)
- To the Land of Long Lost Friends (2019)
- How to Raise an Elephant (2020)
- The Joy and Light Bus Company (2021)
- A Song of Comfortable Chairs (2022)
- From a Far and Lovely Country (2023)
Entertainments
- Portuguese Irregular Verbs (1997)
- The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs (2003)
- At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances (2003)
- The 2½ Pillars of Wisdom (2004)
- Unusual Uses for Olive Oil (2011)
- Your Inner Hedgehog (2021)
Philosophy Club
- The Sunday Philosophy Club (2004)
- Friends, Lovers, Chocolate (2005)
- The Right Attitude to Rain (2006)
- The Careful Use of Compliments (2007)
- The Comfort of Saturdays (2008)
- The Lost Art of Gratitude (2009)
- The Charming Quirks of Others (2010)
- The Forgotten Affairs of Youth (2011)
- The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds (2012)
- The Novel Habits of Happiness (2015)
- At the Reunion Buffet (2015)
- Sweet, Thoughtful Valentine (2016)
- A Distant View of Everything (2017)
- The Quiet Side of Passion (2018)
- The Geometry of Holding Hands (2020)
- The Sweet Remnants of Summer (2022)
- The Conditions of Unconditional Love (2024)
- 44 Scotland Street (2004)
- Espresso Tales (2005)
- Love Over Scotland (2006)
- The World According to Bertie (2007)
- The Unbearable Lightness of Scones (2008)
- The Importance of Being Seven (2010)
- Bertie Plays the Blues (2011)
- Sunshine on Scotland Street (2012)
- Bertie's Guide to Life and Mothers (2013)
- The Revolving Door of Life (2015)
- The Bertie Project (2016)
- A Time of Love and Tartan (2017)
- The Peppermint Tea Chronicles (2019)
- A Promise of Ankles (2020)
- Love in the Time of Bertie (2021)
- The Enigma of Garlic (2022)
- The Stellar Debut of Galactica MacFee (2023)
- Corduroy Mansions (2009)
- The Dog Who Came in from the Cold (2010)
- A Conspiracy of Friends (2011)
- My Italian Bulldoze (2016)
- The Second Worst Restaurant in France (2019)
- The Strange Case of the Moderate Extremists (2019)
- The Department of Sensitive Crimes (2019)
- Varg in Love (2019)
- The Talented Mr. Varg (2020)
- The Man with the Silver Saab (2021)
- The Discreet Charm of the Big Bad Wolf (2023)
- La's Orchestra Saves the World (2008)
- Trains and Lovers (2012)
- The Forever Girl (2014)
- Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party (2014)
- Emma: A Modern Retelling (2015)
- The Good Pilot, Peter Woodhouse (2017)
- The Pavilion in the Clouds (2022)
- The Private Life of Spies (2023)
- The Love Story of Herb la Fouche (2024)
- The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (TV series) (2008)
- The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (radio series) (2004–2019)