Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan

The year is 1910, and the devil’s daughter rows to the shores of Leith in a coffin to bear a child for a wealthy man and his fiancée. Interested? Well, you should be, because Luckenbooth is as bold, daring and ambitious a novel as anything I’ve read in a long time.

Over the course of ninety years, from 1910 to 1999, Jenni Fagan’s third novel opens the door on Number 10 Luckenbooth Close, a nine-storey tenement building just off the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. Inside we are thrown into the lives of a ragtag group of misfits and outsiders that include, not only the Devil’s daughter (Jessie Macrae) but a miner who is afraid of daylight, a bone librarian from the American Deep South, a would be WWII spy, a spiritualist medium and William Burroughs (yes, that one!). Each with their own story to tell and each plagued by the buildings troubled history.

Split into three parts, with each focussing on specific characters, era and floor of the building, Luckenbooth is a love letter to Edinburgh’s dark and sordid side, an unsettling gothic horror tale, and also a lesson in social history, addressing topics such as discrimination, race and wealth inequality.

It would be an understatement to say I loved this book. It drips with lyricism and atmosphere, and is a stunning feat of imagination. I sincerely hope this novel gets all the praise it deserves.