Alexander McCall Smith's The Winds from Further West is a hopeful, philosophical story of new beginnings. Dr. Neil Anderson is mostly content with his public health research position in Edinburgh, Scotland. He enjoys lecturing, he is dating a fellow academic named Chrissie, and his life flows gently along.
But when a brash male student accuses him of saying something denigrating in lectures, Neil refuses to apologize, believing he has done nothing wrong. The head of the research institute suspends him and Neil heads home from work early, only to discover Chrissie having an affair with her interior design tutor.
Neil clearly needs a fresh start, and he leaves Edinburgh to stay in his friend James's holiday cottage on the Isle of Mull. As a local soon remarks to Neil, there's "nothing like a remote spot to put things into perspective," and Neil begins to recuperate from "the zeitgeist... of suspicion and hostility."
McCall Smith (Trains and Lovers; The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency) describes Mull with love--especially the locals who live on island time and enjoy the wide-open skies and seas. Readers will be drawn to his evocative prose as Neil analyzes the loss of his job and the demise of his relationship and discusses the topics with the farmers and fisherfolk around him. Poetic and slowly paced despite all that happens to Neil, The Winds from Further West is a nod to the kind of community that develops when people trust one another other, rather than othering the unknown. --Jessica Howard, former bookseller, freelance book reviewer