Looking for You, by Alexander McCall Smith review: 'Choosing the right partner is a serious business'

I have always liked a story about the great French novelist Balzac. Tired of a discussion about his debts and usual financial morass, he said, "but let's turn to an important question. Who should Eugenie Grandet marry?”, she being the heroine of the new novel he was embarked on. One sees his point. The heroine's marriage was the great question of the 19th century novel. For Jane Austen, the right marriage was a sensible one. Her heroine is never to be yoked to an untrustworthy mate. Very prudent - even though I was always sorry to see Emma, my favourite Austen heroine, married to Mr Knightly. The question is rarely put in Austen-style today, which may be why so many marriages founder. Alexander McCall Smith is, however, in this respect a novelist much like Austen. Choosing the right partner is a serious business, and it is partly a question of compatibility. The business of his heroine Katie is guiding people in the right direction.

This is the second novel in his new sequence in which Katie is, for the time being at least, managing her cousin's Perfect Passion Company, its business fixing up what some have failed to fix for themselves. Actually, I find the name of the bureau a little surprising, "passion" not necessarily being a sound basis for a successful marriage. Passion usually wears itself out. What is then left to build on? What is interesting about this new series is that it raises questions rather out of fashion in fiction today, and passion has little to do with them. McCall Smith is suggesting that we should see marriage as a rational rather than a romantic business. It's a bit like the RSPCA slogan: “a dog is for life, not just for Christmas.”

Of course the people who apply to the Perfect Passion Company are those who have, for whatever reason, failed to find a satisfactory mate. When Katie attends a lecture given by an academic expert she finds it interestingly conservative. There's a lot to be said for having a background in common, much to be said, even, for the boy or girl next door. The trouble is that in cities today you may never get to know the folk who live next door or just across the street.

There are fewer cases for Katie in this novel than in the first one, only two really. The first involves a less than likeable client who is much concerned with family background - "a snob", says William, Katie's charming Australian neighbour and unofficial colleague. The second involves a friend Katie made at the aforementioned lecture, a woman who has been pining for a year after a delightful conversation in a supermarket ended with her, in a moment of panic, declining to give the man her telephone number. This latter is a case that William is happy to take over.

This second Perfect Passion novel is really concerned with the development of Katie's own feelings for Willian, however, and her hesitation in giving expression to them. This is first because he had a fiancee (who cheated on him) in the first book, and second because it seems he may choose to return to Australia. Then a old friend of his, Andrew, turns up and they seem very close, though perhaps it is only a bromance. Still, this too raises the general question of what is suitable and compatible, and there are times when one suspects William, whom everybody likes and indeed falls for, may really be a bit of a tease.

William is presented as altogether delightful, and it is no doubt my fault that he seems just a bit tiresome, too sure of himself. All of which brings us back to a variation on the Balzac question: should Katie marry him? I trust we wont have to wait long for the next episode and - perhaps - the answer. Meanwhile, I can say only that if he is playing hard to get, he is doing so very cleverly.

Looking for You, by Alexander McCall Smith, Polygon, £16.99