Luckenbooth

Title:

Luckenbooth

Author:

Summary:

"There are stories tucked away on every floor of 10 Luckenbooth Close. 1910, Edinburgh. Jessie MacRae has been sent to a tenement building by her recently-deceased father to bear a child for a wealthy man and his fiancée. The harrowing events that follow lead to a curse on the building and its residents--a curse that will last for the rest of the century. Over nine decades, 10 Luckenbooth Close bears witness to emblems of a changing world outside its walls. An infamous madam, a spy, a famous Beat poet, a coal miner who fears daylight, a psychic: these are some of the residents whose lives are plagued by the building's troubled history in disparate, sometimes chilling ways. The curse creeps up the nine floors as a suppressed spirit world swells to the surface, desperate for the true horror of the building's longest kept secret to be heard."-- Dust jacket flap.

Edition:

First Pegasus Books cloth edition.

Physical Description:

338 pages ; 24 cm.

Genre:

Gothic fiction.

Magic realist fiction.

Historical fiction.

Subject Term:

Blessing and cursing -- Fiction.

Tenement houses -- Fiction.

Secrecy -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Edinburgh (Scotland) -- Fiction.

Publisher:

Pegasus Books,

Publication Date:

2022

2021

ISBN:

9781643138879

Publication Information:

New York : Pegasus Books, 2022.

Call Number:

FAGAN

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003587097	Adult Fiction	FAGAN Jenni	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

A bold, haunting, and startlingly unique novel about the secrets we leave behind and the places that hold them long after we are gone, a "quintessential novel of Edinburgh at its darkest." (Irvine Welsh)

There are stories tucked away on every floor of 10 Luckenbooth Close.

1910, Edinburgh. Jessie MacRae has been sent to a tenement building by her recently deceased father to bear a child for a wealthy man and his fiancée. The harrowing events that follow lead to a curse on the building and its residents--a curse that will last for the rest of the century.

Over nine decades, 10 Luckenbooth Close bears witness to emblems of a changing world outside its walls. An infamous madam, a spy, a famous Beat poet, a coal miner who fears daylight, a psychic: these are some of the residents whose lives are plagued by the building's troubled history in disparate, sometimes chilling ways. The curse creeps up the nine floors as an enraged spirit world swells to the surface, desperate for the true horror of the building's longest kept secret to be heard.

Luckenbooth is a bold, haunting, and dazzlingly unique novel about the stories and secrets we leave behind--and the places that hold them long after we are gone.

Author Notes

Jenni Fagan is an award-winning novelist, poet, screenwriter, and playwright. She is the author of two prior novels, The Panopticon and The Sunlight Pilgrims, as well as a collection of poetry, The Dead Queen of Bohemia . In 2013 Jenni was the only Scottish writer to be on Granta's Best of Young British Novelists list. She lives in Edinburgh

Reviews (1)

Publisher's Weekly Review

The interwoven lives of the tenants of No. 10 Luckenbooth Close, a tenement in the heart of Edinburgh, drive this outstanding novel from Fagan (The Panopticon), set over the course of the 20th century. In 1910, young Jessie MacRae sails a coffin into the city's harbor, claiming to have killed the devil, her father; she has horns growing under her hair to prove it. Jessie has been sold to Mr. Udnam, the tenement's owner, to secretly bear his wife's child. Other distinctive characters include Flora, a prostitute and "hermaphrodite," who's working up the nerve to see if the man she loves still loves her; Levi, who's employed in a bone library and is building the skeleton of a mermaid; Agnes, a spiritualist who can summon ghosts; and Ivor, a miner who fears the light. Beat poet William S. Burroughs also makes an appearance. A murder early in the century casts a curse that hovers over the building in the years that follow, as demonstrated by the sound of cloven hoofs. All the tenants' stories enchant as the action builds to a satisfying conclusion. This highly original novel with its fairy tale quality will appeal to fantasy fans as well. Agent: Rebecca Nagel, Wylie Agency. (Jan.)