The Private Side of Friendship
One city. Six strangers. A nation divided. The time of their lives.
$30.58
- Hardcover
272 pages
- Release Date
31 January 2026
Summary
Six friends. One city. The time of their lives.
It’s 1988, and on the verge of a reunion with friends she hasn’t seen since graduation, Julie recalls her halcyon student days of 1984 and the strange tumultuous time they lived through.
The friends – each from a very different background – are living in a gorgeous terraced flat in their Edinburgh idyll. As they navigate relationships and the unspoken rules of flat sharing, the troubled world all around them seems rather distant.…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781846977299 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 1846977290 |
| Author: | Alexander McCall Smith |
| Publisher: | Birlinn General |
| Imprint: | Polygon An Imprint of Birlinn Limited |
| Format: | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages: | 272 |
| Release Date: | 31 January 2026 |
| Weight: | 392g |
| Dimensions: | 18mm x 135mm x 216mm |
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Critics Review
‘Pushing into new territory … [a] typically thoughtful and entertaining novel’
* The Scotsman *‘Warm, uplifting, and totally compelling, I couldn’t put it down. Perfect for curling up with a hot chocolate and a slice of cake on a chilly evening, it’s guaranteed to lift your mood’
* Sixty Plus Surfers *‘A sweet novel infused with a love of the Athens of the North’
* Saga Magazine *‘One of the world’s best known authors, takes readers to a city he knows very well – as six young Edinburgh students embark on a flatshare and navigate new friendships against the backdrop of social unrest of the 1980s miners’ strikes’
* BBC Radio 4 Take 4 Books *‘A gentle read with an insightful look at friendships established during what is for many people a formative stage of their lives’
* Portobello Book Blog *‘It’s whole subject is the apprenticeship for adulthood that studenthood so often represents: that specific time when childhood friendships start to fade and new ones form; when one can feel loneliness in a crowded flat or lecture hall. This whole process of change is neatly mirrored in what is happening in the country at large, as glimpsed in the Armadale miners’ rally…’
– David Robinson, Critic‘An enjoyable, heart-warming read’
– Bookseller Review, Hatchards‘McCall Smith has a talent for creating realistic characters whose thoughts and feelings and conversations are wholly credible’
– Goodreads Five Star Review‘There are constant features across the whole panoply of McCall Smith’s output. Wry and witty observations about the day-to-day lives of normal people. An innocence and delight in the human condition. And, always, a twinkle on the eye shared by writer and reader. He is a happy writer and that makes for happy readers’
– Love ReadingAlexander McCall Smith
Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the highly successful No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, which has sold over twenty-five million copies. Since then he has devoted his time to the writing of fiction and has seen his various series of books translated into over forty-six languages and become bestsellers throughout the world. These include the 44 Scotland Street novels, first published as a serial novel in the Scotsman, the Isabel Dalhousie novels, the Von Igelfeld series and the Corduroy Mansions novels.
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