How unusual to read a book that was originally serialised in a newspaper - very Dickensian. But what a wonderful range of characters, no real villains, although Irene comes close. Pat, our heroine, is drifting through life and loves on her second gap year working in an economically-challenged art gallery. We are to understand that her first gap year was a bit of a disaster but we are given no detail. Her temporary infatuation with the rugger-bugger flatmate, Bruce, was bound to end in tears as any reader would have told her. And that is the attraction of the book, we readers know these characters, we seem to have known them for years, they are our friends as well as Pat’s, even Ian Rankin who has a brief cameo part, and we wish them well. Fascinating though Irene and her precocious son, Bertie are, it is Domenica and Angus who are potentially the more interesting human characters. As for the non-human characters Cyril, the beer-drinking dog, is enchanting, but it is Edinburgh itself with its good-heartedness and genteel bourgeois world that captivates. We will undoubtedly miss all this when Scotland votes for independence next year, and this will be a great loss to British cultural life
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