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    Chance Developments: Unexpected Love Stories
    Chance Developments: Unexpected Love Stories
    Chance Developments: Unexpected Love Stories
    Audiobook5 hours

    Chance Developments: Unexpected Love Stories

    Written by Alexander McCall Smith

    Narrated by Jamie Jackson, John Keating, Robert Ian Mackenzie and

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    It is said that a picture may be worth a thousand words but an old photograph can inspire many more. In this beguiling book, Alexander McCall Smith casts his eye over five chanced-upon photographs from the era of black-and-white photography and imagines the stories behind them.Who were those people, what were their stories, why are they smiling, what made them sad?What emerges are surprising and poignant tales of love and friendship in a variety of settings - an estate in the Highlands of Scotland, a travelling circus in Canada, an Australian gold-mining town, a village in Ireland, and the Scottish capital, Edinburgh.Some will find joy and fulfilment - others would prefer happier endings. Each of them, though, will find love, and that is ultimately what matters.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJul 12, 2016
    ISBN9781501924989
    Chance Developments: Unexpected Love Stories
    Author

    Alexander McCall Smith

    Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the award-winning series The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency, and he now devotes his time to the writing of fiction, including the 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie series. He is the author of over eighty books on a wide array of subjects, and his work has been translated into forty-six languages. Before becoming a full-time writer he was for many years Professor of Medical Law at Edinburgh.

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    Reviews for Chance Developments

    4/5

    59 ratings9 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A new oeuvre for McCall Smith
      Quite delightful but the same wry humor
      How does he do it?
      But… Bertie gets the first prize!
    • 3/5
      About 5 or 6 short stories. One, a sweet love story, brought tears to my eyes at the end. I read these stories to my wife as she did her quilting. Fun!
    • 4/5
      A rather pleasant collection of short stories, each one based on an old photograph.
    • 4/5
      Five lovely stories imagined from five old black & white photos.AMS is a master of story telling.i particularly enjoyed the one about the Irish schoolteacher who ‘snares’ the rich man’s daughter with a devilish trick.
    • 3/5
      Love stories based on random old photos notselected by the author. Not his best.
    • 3/5
      Five short stores involving romantic love. In his introductory “author's note,” the author explains that he asked his editor ”if he might find me a selection of black-and-white photographs of people from the past so that I could imagine the stories behind the images.” I found the character in the first story so unappealing that I thought the book would be a bust, but the rest of them were better. The story based on the cover photo, “Dear Ventriloquist,” was my favorite but they all, even the first story, have some interest and charm.
    • 5/5
      Leave it to Alexander McCall-Smith to take random vintage photos and weave stories around them. This slim volume is deceiving because within its compact-sized body lies a world of wonder and a world of love. Told in his own enchanting style, these five short stories will leave the reader feeling good about life. My favorite of the five is Sister Flora’s First Day of Freedom where a woman leaves the convent and reenters the secular world. Having spent a good deal of her adult life in seclusion, she sets out to speedily make up for lost time. In Dear Ventriloquist we are treated to a look at carnival life and revel in the private lives and loves of those whose life centers around the big top and midway.Sister Flora’s First Day of Freedom: a nun in Scotland, the recipient of a legacy, leaves the convent, her home of ten years, with a specific goal in mind.Angels in Italy: an artist who regrets his behaviour as a young man learns something surprising when reunited with a friend from his youth.Dear Ventriloquist: a young circus performer’s fortune-telling proves to be unexpectedly accurate.The Woman with the Beautiful Car: a young man acts in an uncharacteristic way to gain the attention of a lady.He Wanted to Believe in Tenderness: an old man counts his blessings despite a less-than-ideal life.Each story is captivating in its own way. Every reader will find something to like within these short stories. McCall-Smith’s charming way with words will mesmerize you. If you haven’t yet read any of McCall-Smith’s series or if you aren’t sure you’ll enjoy his writing style, then this is the perfect book for you. The physical book is nicely sized to tuck into a purse or briefcase (yes, gentlemen, you too will enjoy these stories). I certainly hope the author plans on doing more of these photo stories.
    • 4/5
      This is the first fiction I've read by this author. It's a series of five short stories, each inspired by an old photograph of unknown persons. I've read and enjoyed similar series based on paintings, so the concept is not exactly new. Smith is a fine writer, but overall, the stories left me somewhat underwhelmed. A photo of a frumpy woman in a train station leads to the story of a woman leaving her vows as a nun and searching for the right man. A portrait of three children--a standing girl, a girl on a pony, and a kilted boy on a tricycle--inspires a story of love lost and regained. A man sitting on a woman's lap develops into the tale of a lady ventriloquist and an animal tamer. A man and a woman sitting in a vintage plane inspires another love story, this one set in Australia. And a photograph of a woman standing beside a white roadster, a man at her side, tells the tale of love that crosses class and religious barriers. All in all, small but interesting stories, but nothing to write home about.
    • 5/5
      First of all, I need to point out this book is NOT crime fiction. It is part of ploy to widen my reading horizons although of course McCall Smith, the creator of Precious Ramotswe, is already an author that I enjoy.What the author has done is to take five black and white or sepia photographs and imagine the stories that might be behind the photos. His stories make you look more closely at the photos, perhaps even to curse their fuzziness and the fact that you can't enlarge them. And yet each story seems very appropriate to the particular photo.Just five short stories. So it is a pretty quick read, and an interesting one at that.