Will I love Luckenbooth?

Wow, what a wild ride! I just loved the sheer energy of Fagan’s book, its inventiveness, and its rage.

This book isn’t my usual kind of book. I’m not big into ghosts and spirits, but I couldn’t resist the joyous opening with the Devil’s daughter sailing the coffin her father made her across the sea to find a new life. And what life and death this book is filled with. I relished the huge cast of characters across decades, all connected by one house in Edinburgh, and squirmed and laughed in equal measure as their stories twisted and turned almost… show more.

I was re-reading this book for a reason: to get myself back into old Edinburgh because I’m embarking on a sequel to one of my novels, and I needed to reconnect with the ancient parts of the city I used to live in.

Luckenbooth is set much later than my book, so there is no danger of undue influence, but the atmosphere is very reminiscent. And wow, that atmosphere! In her novel, Jenni Fagan imagines that in 1910 an event happened that led the main character to place a curse on a nine-story building in Luckenbooth Close.

The novel darts… show more.

This novel tells the stories of the residents of an Edinburgh close across the span of the twentieth century. Fagan’s Edinburgh is wonderfully, atmospheric but it’s the close itself and the goings on in its cheek-by-jowl apartments following the arrival of Jessie, sold by her father (whom she has killed) into sexual slavery, and with revenge on her mind, that permeates this murderous, richly gothic story.