Isabel Dalhousie sorts out ‘family’ in ‘Forgotten Affairs’ by Alexander McCall Smith

Home. Belonging. Place.

Edinburgh philosopher Isabel Dalhousie ponders these concepts at the core of human existence in "The Forgotten Affairs of Youth," the latest novel in Alexander McCall Smith’s series about the inquisitive Scot with the quite-a-bit-younger boyfriend and toddler baby, Charlie-who-loves-olives.

The well-trod streets and worn stone walls of an ancient, elegant city are in Isabel’s very DNA and that of her kin. Edinburgh is where she fits. Home can be no other place. She mulls the idea that salmon undertake an arduous, dangerous journey to return to the very spot where they were spawned. But for some people, finding home is not so simple.

Jane Cooper, an Australian philosopher visiting Edinburgh on a research project, asks Isabel to help her in another quest — finding her real father. Jane was sent to Australia as an infant and adopted. She knows only that her biological father was a university student in Edinburgh. Her birth mother died a few years later.

Isabel, always unable to resist a puzzle of the human condition, agrees to help her new colleague find her father.

But in the process, she encounters new questions: Is parenthood a matter of blood or heart? Must truth win out at any cost? What, really, is a family?

Meanwhile, Isabel’s fiance, Jamie, wants to get married — soon. A poison scare sends Isabel to the emergency room, and the culprit is someone close and dear. All this as literary adversary Lettuce deploys a secret agent to get the best of his rival. Housekeeper Grace’s spiritual adviser offers stock market advice from the apparent beyond.

Gentle, humorous, charming — Alexander McCall Smith invariably takes an unvarnished but kindly snapshot of modern society and the result, every time, is entertaining and enchanting reading about characters you think you know — and wish you did.

The prolific Smith also writes the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, the 44 Scotland Street series and numerous other books. But he can’t write fast enough for his fans.