The Winds from Further West by Alexander McCall Smith review – 'gently subversive'

Set in Edinburgh and on the Isle of Mull, the latest novel from Alexander McCall Smith finds a jilted lover trying to get his life back on track. Review by Roger Cox

In 2016, Alexander McCall Smith took a break from writing his internationally bestselling No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency series and the 44 Scotland Street books, serialised for many years in this newspaper, to write a standalone novel titled My Italian Bulldozer. In it, a food writer called Paul is dumped by his long-term partner, travels to Italy to complete a new book on Tuscan cuisine, and is then afforded the opportunity to slow down and reassess his life when, due to an unfortunate mix-up at the car hire desk at Pisa airport, he finds himself traversing Italy not in a car, but in the titular tracked construction vehicle.

McCall Smith's latest standalone novel, The Winds Further West, follows a similar narrative arc. This time the hero, Neil, has suffered disasters in both his personal and professional life, and so he retreats from the pressure-cooker world of Edinburgh academia to the Isle of Mull, planning to stay for a few weeks in an out-of-the-way house belonging to his friend James. As he puts it "I feel I've stumbled out of a world in which people liked one another into a world where everybody is at one another's throats... I want to get away from it."

Neil, a public health expert, has fallen victim to cancel culture. Something he said in a lecture has been misrepresented in a complaint by a keen-to-make-his-mark student, and rather than backing him, his boss, Henrietta, has instead urged him to make an official apology. Refusing to say sorry when he doesn't think he has done anything wrong, Neil resigns – and then almost straight away discovers that his partner, Chrissie, also an academic and working in the same institute, has been having an affair with an interior designer. (In My Italian Bulldozer, Paul's partner Becky runs off with her musclebound personal trainer.)

Alexander McCall Smith PIC: Kirsty Anderson

However, just as the enforced slowness of Paul’s bulldozer adventure allows him to focus on what he really wants out of life, so Neil’s Mull sojourn gives him an opportunity to pause and reflect on the things that truly make him happy. His new neighbours are Stuart, a fisherman, farmer and “oyster rancher”, and Maddie, a multi-tasking, Shakespeare-spouting English Lit graduate, who “knits sweaters, keeps goats and designs websites”, and in different ways both of them help him to heal, and to move on. Then there’s Jill, the local vet, said to be “the modern incarnation of Circe”, who seems to be taking more than a passing interest in the island’s newest resident.

Before Neil can get too comfortable in his new life, however, James arrives on Mull with some surprising information which Neil could use to exact revenge on those who have wronged him. The question is, will he use it? And if so, how? And, come to think of it, why does James suddenly seem so invested in what he’s planning to do next?

Much like Paul in My Italian Bulldozer, Neil has an almost supernatural ability to act rationally and compassionately in the kinds of situations which would bring out the worst in almost anyone, however seemingly good-natured. One way of reading this is that McCall Smith perhaps doesn't understand human nature, but that's too simplistic. Instead, I think Neil, like Paul, is being presented to us a hero in the truest sense – as an ideal to be emulated – which makes this book, like My Italian Bulldozer, gently subversive. Conventional romantic heroes are supposed to be hot-headed and impetuous, driven by a mixture of lust and animal instinct. By contrast, Paul and Neil both take a thoughtful, understated and deeply humane approach to matters of the heart. We're a million miles away from Heathcliff, in other words, but who would want to end up with a Heathcliff when you could have a Neil?

The Winds from Further West, by Alexander McCall Smith, Polygon, £16.99