Categories: books
Date: 13 July 2009 08:00:05
This book is a trilogy consisting of Portuguese Irregular Verbs, The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs and At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances. I know some of my gentle readers have enjoyed the 1st Ladies' Detective Agency series and so they may also enjoy this series too for it is by none other than the wonderfully wry Alexander McCall Smith.
The main characters in the books are professors of philology at the University of Regenburg and are Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld and his two equally erudite colleagues Professor Dr Dr (h.c.) Florianus Prinzel and Professor Dr Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer.
In the telling of the faintly ridiculous stories of the scrapes these three learned but frankly slightly batty professors manage to fall into, McCall Smith gently ribs the world of academe - particularly the German version - highlighting the three professors' mighty but obscure contributions to knowledge. Prof. von Igelfeld is "the author of a seminal work on Romance philology, Portuguese Irregular Verbs, a work of such majesty that it dwarfed all other books in the field. It was a lengthy book of almost twelve hundred pages, and was the result of years of research into the etymology and vagaries of Portuguese verbs. It had been well received - not that there had ever been the slightest doubt about that - and indeed one reviewer had simply written, 'There is nothing more to be said on this subject. Nothing.'
McCall Smith's teasing of his characters never descends into sneering at them but he tells their stories in the mode of PG Wodehouse. His characters fall into absurd situations and, because of their politeness and embarassment, they are too mesmerised to point out the misunderstandings and find themselves getting into deeper and deeper difficulties. If I'm honest, I'm not sure he quite matches Wodehouse's humour but he comes very close. The tales are not as "cosy" as the ones featuring Mma Ramotswe but are nevertheless an enjoyable light read.