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Title: Heavenly Date and Other Flirtations
Author: Alexander McCall Smith
Narrator: Anton Lesser
Format: Abridged
Length: 3 hrs and 31 mins
Language: English
Release date: 02-05-07
Publisher: Hachette Audio UK
Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 5 votes
Genres: Fiction, Chick Lit
Publisher's Summary:
From the creator of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency comes a medley of perverse couplings, casual dates and romantic encounters: hilarious tales that will sadden, inspire, and surprise. McCall Smith, a master of the unexpected and a seamless storyteller, revels in offering us the quirky complications inherent in the entanglements that human beings engineer for themselves - entanglements that can be shocking, unedifying, complex, and sometimes completely disastrous.
©1995 Alexander McCall Smith; (P)2007 Hachette Audio
Critic Reviews:
"I haven't read anything with such unalloyed pleasure for a long time." (Sunday Telegraph)
"The people who inhabit these stories are funny, shocking, middle-class, and sinister, the author's wacky imagination being the only constant we can always take for granted." (Scotsman)
Members Reviews:
Powerful stories, movingly told
I just finished Heavenly Date and Other Flirtations by Alexander McCall Smith (#1 Ladies Detective Agency, 44 Scotland Street, Sunday Philosopher's Club, etc.) It is a collection of short stories (maybe one novella-length) all on the general topic of dating/courtship.
If you go into this thinking of Smith as an author with a light-hearted approach to storytelling, you'll be rather shocked as most of these stories have darker elements. But if you're more broadly familiar with his works and recognize that he has a keen sense of the human condition, writing in a straightforward and thought-provoking manner, you'll be as delighted as I was. Many of the stories don't have "clean" endings, but they all make you think and the situations and stories and even the styles are varied.
I had previously read Smith'sChance Developments, a similar collection of themed stories, and enjoyed it very much. I highly recommend Heavenly Date, as long as your expectations are properly set.
I love Alexander McCall Smith's writing
I love Alexander McCall Smith's writing. A move away from the Ladies Detective Series and Philosophy club but still entertaining.
Mostly okay
Alexander McCall Smith's collection of short stories in 'Heavenly Date' are just more examples of the flair with which he writes. The stories are varied and interesting and at times surprising. The perfect accompaniment to a cup of tea on a Sunday afternoon.
Modern Day Immaculate Conception
Alexander McCall Smith is recently best known for his "Ladies No. 1 Detective Series" which takes place in Botswana. And true to those roots, his showcase story, "Bulawayo" does take place in Botswana, but since it is set in 1951, he uses the old name, Rhodesia.
This book is truly masterfully crafted. Smith describes 9 'dates' that men and woman have, and mostly, the problems they encounter in the dating. Only 2 of his stories end 'happily' if you will. The others are virtual disasters. But the beauty of the construction of the book is how the complexity of the dating gets more complicated and the story Smith tells about each has a somewhat different character, although a certain dryness of style that Smith uses is unmistakably done intentionally.
Smith's wonderfully "Freudian" story "Intimate Accounts" is just like reading out of "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life" by Freud himself.
