Luckenbooth
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Cornerstone
Published:12th Aug '21
Should be back in stock very soon
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Paperback - Signed Edition£9.99(9780099592198-S)
Set in 1910 Edinburgh, a young woman sent to bear a child for a wealthy couple curses a tenement building, impacting its residents and revealing long-hidden secrets over a century. Luckenbooth explores their intertwined stories.
Luckenbooth is a captivating novel set in Edinburgh in 1910, centered around Jessie, the daughter of the devil. She arrives at an imposing tenement building with a significant mission: to bear a child for a wealthy couple. However, when her plans go awry, Jessie unleashes a curse upon the building and its inhabitants that endures for a century. This curse becomes a central theme, affecting the lives of all who dwell within its walls.
The narrative unfolds through the diverse stories of the residents at 10 Luckenbooth Close, each character grappling with their own struggles and secrets. As the outside world evolves, the curse seeps through the building, impacting the lives of those living there in profound ways. The tension builds as the truth about Jessie and the events that transpired begins to surface, revealing the interconnectedness of their fates.
Acclaimed by critics, Luckenbooth has received numerous accolades, including being shortlisted for prestigious literary prizes. The novel has been described as a stunning literary experience and a gloriously transgressive work, showcasing the author’s ambition and skill. As the characters' stories intertwine, the reader is drawn into a rich tapestry of emotion, mystery, and the haunting legacy of the curse that binds them all together.
One of the most stunning literary experiences I've had in years. LUCKENBOOTH, sprawling the decades with its themes of repression and revenge, brings back something that has long been lacking in the British novel: ambition. If Alasdair Gray's Lanark was a masterly imagining of Glasgow, then this is the quintessential novel of Edinburgh at its darkest. -- Irvine Welsh
It's extraordinary. Make sure it's on your radar ... Definitely going to be one of my books of 2021, a gloriously transgressive novel of Edinburgh denizens past and present. -- Ian Rankin
Over time, 10 Luckenbooth Close sinks from grand residence to condemned squat with secrets seething in its walls ... Luckenbooth is a place of compacted time, where the past manifests as unquiet ghosts and the future bleeds into the present ... There's a force in Luckenbooth's bizarre assemblage. * The Times *
With Luckenbooth, [Jenni Fagan] gives us nine of Edinburgh's wildest and loneliest misfits ... Piles on claustrophobia and menace ... As we move between the characters' perspectives, gritty realism takes over from the gothic. This isn't fancy Edinburgh: at No 10 it's cigarettes, cocaine and Benzedrine for breakfast ... There are memorable creations ... Fagan's prose is poetic, high-octane, built on punchy sentences. Arresting descriptions of the city and its weather abound. This is not a novel that lacks energy. * Sunday Times *
Jenni Fagan's Luckenbooth reminded me of one of my favourite novels, Georges Perec'sLife: A User's Manual. Set in an Edinburgh tenement, it leaps across decades to tell the story of the curse that haunts No 10 Luckenbooth Close and its eccentric inhabitants. -- Alex Preston * Observer *
ISBN: 9780099592198
Dimensions: 197mm x 129mm x 22mm
Weight: 284g
352 pages