Monday, January 4, 2010

Another book

I finished another of my books from the library: La's Orchestra Saves the World by Alexander McCall Smith. He is a pretty prolific writer, and I think I have read most of the books he has written. I suppose he is best know for his No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series.
La's Orchestra is about a woman named Lavendar (La for short) Stone and is set mainly during WWII in England. It is not a mystery as are most of McCall Smith's other novels, but is a quiet story of an ordinary woman and how she got by during a time of war. One of the things she did was to start an orchestra made up of local people and some airmen from the nearby military base. She felt that music would help in a time when everything seemed rather hopeless, and it did. Another part of the story is how the Poles were treated by the English during WWII. There is a romantic interest for La in the person of Feliks Dabrowski, a Polish serviceman she meets while helping with the war effort by working on a local farm.
I liked this book, but did not find the characters as interesting as those in McCall Smith's other novels.

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