Luckenbooth
Jenni Fagan
Pegasus Books
Scotland, 1910. Islander Jennie MacRae is the Devil’s daughter. After her father’s current incarnation is killed she honors a contract he made for her to serve as surrogate mother to a powerful childless man and his fiancee in Edinburgh. But for all his outward charm and extensive influence in the city Mr. Udnam is bad to the core. When Jennie and Udnam’s fiancee Elise fall in love, his terrible revenge sets in motion a decades long curse on the tenement house of 10 Luckenbooth Close.
… an extraordinary work that harks back to the grittier, far darker nature of the original fairy tales.
The tenement is one of the tallest in Edinburgh. Over the years its nine floors shelter the poor and disadvantaged, the kind of people who are looked down upon by the grander folk of the increasingly gentrified city. Each of them is touched by the curse. Some are more aware than others that something isn’t right within the old building. The tapping in the walls—deathwatch beetle, or far, far worse? From the non-binary Flapper, through the black American veterinary student, the WW2 spy, the psychic, beat poets and madam, gangsters and a coal miner afraid of the light, Luckenbooth hosts them all. As the years pass so the building decays to the point its most ghastly secret is released. Who will be bold and brave enough to see its final act?
Luckenbooth is an extraordinary work that harks back to the grittier, far darker nature of the original fairy tales. Each character is unique, with their own voice adding to the entwined stories that make up the fascinating, dark, brilliant whole.
