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Pianos and Flowers: Brief Encounters of the Romantic Kind

par Alexander McCall Smith

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1065255,130 (3.5)6
"In Pianos and Flowers we are invited, through the medium of sepia images, to glimpse a world long departed. In these stories, inspired by long-lost photographs, the lives of the people in the frame are imagined and then explored, layer by layer. What must have it like to be them? We hold our breath for them. Our heart beats faster for them. We look again at the photograph in a new light, and say Yes, it might have happened just like that. This journey of exploration takes us to some exotic places. We share the lives of three sisters, brought up in Penang. We read of what happened to them, and to their Chinese neighbors caught in the tides of war. We see a group of small boys in a Glasgow slum, their young lives stunted by poverty, and hear how life worked out in contrasting ways for them. We follow a young woman's search for love in the unlikely realm of Egyptian antiquities. And through all of these photographs, and all of these stories, there runs the same refrain: the possibilities of love, of friendship, of happiness lie before us. There are big stories in these simple pictures. At first glance the photographs may seem unexceptional: the mere freezing of a moment in time. But delve deeper and you will realize that these photographs speak volumes"--… (plus d'informations)
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» Voir aussi les 6 mentions

5 sur 5
This was a unique book in that it imagined back stories for unidentified people captured in old photographs. I enjoyed some of the stories and found them creative and sometimes amusing (though sometimes they were depressing instead), but I didn't think these stories showcased Alexander McCall Smith's style in the best way. In creating an almost birth-to-grave story for a character that you literally only have a snapshot of, there's very little opportunity to really relate to any of the characters or develop an interest in them.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for this digital review copy! ( )
  Alishadt | Feb 25, 2023 |
What can I say... Charming! Here Alexander McCall Smith really displays the breadth of his imagination as a writer: to take an old photograph (from a newspaper's archive) and base a short story on it without knowing anything about the people portrayed! 14 unique vignettes like that... Ordinary people with ordinary (and yet unique) lives, with ordinary human frailties and shortcomings - presented to us in the spirit of warmth and acceptance and a comforting shrug: it's no big deal to be this way and that way, we are all like that... Full of witty humor - it was simply a joy to read. If I had to choose a story that I loved the most, I would say "Iron Jelloids", and the one that made me really sad - "Urchins".

Here is one of my favorite quotes:

"When we look in retrospect at the saliences of our lives, we realize, sometimes with astonishment, that this is how they are shaped: a single event, a chance word of advice, an apparently minor decision of another - any of these may dictate what happens to us and what we ourselves do. In the face of this subjection to chance, the role played by free will and what we see as our own choice may seem a small one." ( )
1 voter Clara53 | Jun 17, 2021 |
Do not approach this call Smith book like you do others. This isn’t the sunshiny optimistic books we’re used to from him. Read with an open mind. He’s created short stories based on newspaper photos. Readers will find themselves making personal connections with some, and others with not much relevance. This would be a book best read in paper version. Readers will want to flip back and forth to the photographs as they read the stories. ( )
1 voter brangwinn | Jan 19, 2021 |
The Sunday Times asked author Alexander McCall Smith to write some short stories for the paper. He proposed that he would look through the newspaper’s photo archive, choose photos, and create stories for the people in the picture. Pianos and Flowers: Brief Encounters of the Romantic Kind is a delightful collection of photo-based stories. Some had been published previously in The Sunday Times, while others were written for this book.

As McCall Smith writes on his website: When you are with somebody you love the smallest, smallest things can be so important, so amusing because love transforms the world, everything.

Some writers would choose dramatic photos that lent themselves well for a sensationalistic approach. Others may have chosen photos of well-known people and shown a day-in-the-life moment. Fortunately, McCall Smith stuck with his strengths, choosing photos of non-remarkable people in seemingly non-remarkable situations and bringing characters to life. His other works have used rich adjectives to bring his characters and environment to life, and he does not disappoint here. Smith shows the same deftness describing these unknown figures as he did bringing Precious Ramotswe to life in his Ladies’ Detective Agency series.

Each of his stories offers a view of relationships. In stories like the titular Pianos and Flowers, he looks at the characters’ relationships over the course of a lifetime. Iron Jelloids is one of the stories that focuses on one day that led to a dramatic change in the lives of the characters. Maternal Design and Students look at family relationships and how they can impact career choices, while The Dwarf Tale-Teller of the Romanian Rom looks at the difficult choice between romance and careers. Not all of the stories have happy endings, but each has a satisfying ending.

Pianos and Flowers is a great choice for fans of Alexander McCall Smith. Anyone who enjoys reading short stories would enjoy this collection. It would be great for readers to carry with them to have a quick read. It is also easy to binge on multiple essays in one setting. Even though each story is inspired by different photographs, they are all infused with Alexander McCall Smith’s character-driven writing style. He publishes a story on his website each month for those who enjoy Pianos and Flowers and want to read more of his shorter works. I hope that Alexander McCall Smith continues to create and share such enjoyable collections.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me a copy in exchange for my honest review. ( )
  life2reinvent | Jan 18, 2021 |
I requested a digital galley of this book because it employs an exercise I used when teaching creative writing. Unfortunately, this collection of vignettes based on old black-and-white photographs left me unimpressed.

The author used old photos and imagined the lives of the people captured. The subtitle suggests that there should be romance in each, but that is certainly not the case. For example, “Pogo Sticks and Man with Bicycle” imagines how Francis Crick and James Watson, while working on building a model of DNA, might have examined the spring in a pogo stick and seen a double helix. Another episode entitled “Urchins” imagines the lives of the boys captured in a 1920 photo; none of them has a love story of any note.

Because the pieces are so short, there is little depth. In “Urchins” the life stories of four boys are told. There are long sections of prose giving mundane details, so there is more background than actual action. I guess some of the vignettes could be considered charming, but they are forgettable.

Perhaps the stories are intended to be read one at a time. Because I read them in a couple of sittings, I noticed considerable overlap. Margaret in “Sphinx” has a landlady who is “the widow of a dentist” while Merlin in “Iron Jelloids” lives in the house of “a police sergeant’s widow.” Both landladies are very kind to their tenants. In “Blackmail” there’s a dishonest “financial clerk” and another one in “Pogo Sticks and Man with Bicycle.” Margaret in “Sphinx” is raised by an aunt who is a “district nurse” while in “Duty” “a theatre nurse” helps raise her brother’s twins once he is widowed. Student nurses appear in at least three stories. In “Sphinx” Margaret “drifted into something, in the way in which we are all capable of drifting into things, without any conscious assertion of will, any firm choice, because it is easy and we feel sorry for people and we cannot find a simple way of avoiding their emotional claims.” In “Duty” twins drift into relationships though they love someone else.

Coincidence and unbelievable events are used liberally. Three sisters play matchmakers to two teachers and then years later unknowingly appear in a photograph with these teachers? Tea with St. John’s Wort cures depression and iron pills bestow confidence? In a double ceremony, a minister marries the wrong women to the wrong men, but the brides and grooms don’t notice the mistake?

The author is prolific and popular, so my review will probably not reflect the views of the majority. I just expected more and was disappointed.

Note: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley. This book will be released in two days, on Tuesday, January 17.

Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski). ( )
  Schatje | Jan 17, 2021 |
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"In Pianos and Flowers we are invited, through the medium of sepia images, to glimpse a world long departed. In these stories, inspired by long-lost photographs, the lives of the people in the frame are imagined and then explored, layer by layer. What must have it like to be them? We hold our breath for them. Our heart beats faster for them. We look again at the photograph in a new light, and say Yes, it might have happened just like that. This journey of exploration takes us to some exotic places. We share the lives of three sisters, brought up in Penang. We read of what happened to them, and to their Chinese neighbors caught in the tides of war. We see a group of small boys in a Glasgow slum, their young lives stunted by poverty, and hear how life worked out in contrasting ways for them. We follow a young woman's search for love in the unlikely realm of Egyptian antiquities. And through all of these photographs, and all of these stories, there runs the same refrain: the possibilities of love, of friendship, of happiness lie before us. There are big stories in these simple pictures. At first glance the photographs may seem unexceptional: the mere freezing of a moment in time. But delve deeper and you will realize that these photographs speak volumes"--

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