Alexander McCall Smith's delightful Scotland Street occupies a busy, bohemian corner of Edinburgh's New Town, where the old bourgeoisie rubs shoulders with students, poets and eccentrics. When Pat is accepted as a new tenant at number 44 Scotland Street, she isn't sure how long she'll last. Her flatmate Bruce, a rugby-playing chartered surveyor, is impossibly narcissistic, carelessly philandering and infuriatingly handsome.
Downstairs lives pretentious Irene Pollock, whose five-year-old son is in therapy after setting fire to his father's copy of the Guardian. And watching over them all is shrewd, intellectual Domenica Macdonald, anthropologist and sharp-eyed observer of the household's activities .. .