Jenni Fagan

Luckenbooth

Dr Dee

Also, I found out No. 10 Luckenbooth Close is called that because of an old word 

, it’s what they called the first locked booths for trading, they used to drag carts to sell silver and other things but they’d have to cart them back and forth across the city and I tell you, brother, the hills in this city are no joke, if I wasn’t a God-fearing man I’d say they were designed by a psychopath.

There is a woman in the stair (that’s what they call living in the building here 

 – means she lives here in this building and she does not in fact live in the stair but in her apartment),

A young man describing Edinburgh to his brother in Louisiana.

Mince and tatties are cooked on a Thursday, it makes the building smell bad. Tatties are potatoes. Aye, means yes. Noh, means no. I dinnae ken, means – I’m so terribly sorry I don’t have the slightest idea what you are talking about. I had no idea they didn’t speak English here! Unless they are posh, the posh people speak English with an Edinburgh burr. The accent is softer in Edinburgh city centre than it is out of town. I went out there last week and I didn’t understand a single thing said the entire time, I kept nodding and hoped I hadn’t gotten myself into illegal gains of any kind. It is fish on Fridays. I stay out that day. I tried haggis. They store it in the stomach of a sheep. I have no idea what’s in it but it’s spicy and good.

Moray Lyle McIntosh

Phenomenal. One of the best books I've read this year. Jenni Fagan brings her matchless ability to make her setting a character in its own right to build a whole world within the walls of tenement of 10 Luckenbooth Close. She follows characters through the 19th to the 21st centuries, illuminating the lives of outsiders and the disenfranchised. There's a fae mood to the writing so that it reads like a fairy story for the modern day, creating characters that seem like figures from folk tales but flesh and blood. It's dark and winding like the narrow streets of the Old Town and the narrative skips and jumps and only slowly coalesces but the feeling of place holds it all together beautifully. It's a complex and fabulous read.

Featured in Damian Barr's picks for 2021 'Definitely going to be one of my books of 2021, a gloriously transgressive novel of Edinburgh denizens past and present.' IAN RANKIN ________________________ Stories tucked away on every floor. No. 10 Luckenbooth Close is an archetypal Edinburgh tenement. The devil's daughter rows to the shores of Leith in a coffin. The year is 1910 and she has been sent to a tenement building in Edinburgh 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, No. 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 and 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. ________________________ '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 'A deeply powerful, compellingly vivid novel ... LUCKENBOOTH is a major work of Scottish fiction - possibly one of the most significant novels of the last ten years' ALAN WARNER

Blayke 


𝑺𝒐𝒃𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒕𝒚 𝒊𝒔 𝒍𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒖𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒏 𝒔𝒖𝒑𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒆𝒅𝒍𝒚 𝒆𝒅𝒖𝒄𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒑𝒆𝒐𝒑𝒍𝒆 𝒊𝒏𝒔𝒊𝒔𝒕

𝐸𝑁/𝐹𝑅

When was the last time you just looked at a book and asked “WTF?” 
Mine was in October with Luckenbooth when I end up cursing myself for proposing it.
Luckenbooth was the strangest and my most delusional read of this autumn 2021.
Set in Edinburg, instagramable city known for its humid ambiance, its castle and representation in novels, the story starts at the beginning of the 20th century with Jessie, the Devil’s daughter who ends up an orphan, sold to a couple to make her a surrogate. 
And from there, it’ll all go down to the curse placed on the address 10 Luckenbooth Close.
The positive point of this reading was the atmosphere, perfect for fall and the humid weather which perfectly represent the city and the frame of it. 
The book, in itself, is complicate to follow with. It’s divided in three parts, each one of them separated in three different point of view, never the same through the parts. 
I picked it up with a friend, to use it as part of an annotating project.
The idea was that I’d read it, annotate it with post-it and note, and then send it to her so she could read it with my observations.
And honestly during my whole reading I was just profoundly uncomfortable at the simple fact she would read it too.
I felt uneasy during all my reading, and I couldn’t point out why. Maybe this type of storytelling isn’t for me, but I tend to love strange stories, maybe the sex scenes were way too present for nothing, but I’m not bother by that normally, or maybe I just found the read wire of it lacking in interest. 
At least, I hope my annotations made Cécile laughs.
I know a lot of people though the writing was poetic, shook provoking, innovative. And I’ll only ask if these persons have read The Naked Lunch by William Burroughs?
Because there are two points in this book that annoyed me enormously. 
The useless sex scenes and the presence of William Burroughs as a character. 

If we put aside the threesome and so on, the fact that the author uses him as a point of view in her book didn’t sit right with me, especially when her writing style tends to imitate his and when we don’t have any proof that W.B., as a drug addict as he was, would have act like that. 
Just like the Naked Lunch, Luckenbooth is at the same time intriguing by its strangeness and repulsive by the narration. A mess of sentences trying to be poetic and surrealist scenes that just bring the story around the simple baseline of revenge. 


WARNING: If you’re reading this review on your smartphone, the next paragraph is the spoiler part.
<spoiler> 
When I understood that Jessie would not be the main point of view I must say I was pissed off. I bought this book thinking that I’ll get a nice autumn story about the devil’s daughter, power and gossip inside Edinburg. I didn’t planned to read a book about how the said devil’s daughter, who has turned into the devil herself after eating her father’s heart if you want my opinion, would use the inhabitants of the building to avenge herself, her lover and their daughter. 
As soon as I started the book, with this strange threesome, I known I was going to fall on my face. 
I tend to like pretty prose, poetic writing, even love it but here everything seems too much for me. Some point of view were interesting and well-linked to Jessie but some were just unnecessary, as for W.B. who really, didn’t have anything to do here. 
To be perfectly honest, If It wasn’t for my friend and our project together, I’d have DNF it. 
</spoiler>


A quand remonte la dernière fois que vous avez regardé un livre et vous vous êtes dit « WTF ? » 
La mienne était en octobre avec Luckenbooth quand j’ai fini par me maudire de l’avoir proposé.
Luckenbooth a été ma lecture la plus étrange et la plus décevante de cet automne 2021. 
Prenant place à Edinburg, une ville instagrammable connue pour son ambiance humide, son château et sa représentation dans les romans, l’histoire commence au début du 20ième siècle avec Jessie, la fille du diable qui se retrouve orpheline et vendue à un couple afin de devenir mère porteuse. 
Et à partir d’ici, tout se centrera sur la malédiction frappant l’adresse 10 Luckenbooth Close. 
Le point positif de ce livre était l’atmosphère, parfaite pour l’automne et sa météo qui représente parfaitement la ville et son cadre. 
Le livre, en lui-même, était compliqué à suivre. Divisé en trois parties, chacune d’entre elle séparée en trois point de vue, jamais le même à travers les parts. 
Je l’ai choisi avec une amie, pour un projet d’annotations. 
L’idée était que je le lise, que je l’annote avec des notes et des post-it, et que je lui envoie pour qu’elle puisse le lire avec mes observations. 

Et honnêtement, durant toute ma lecture, j’étais juste profondément mal à l’aise vis-à-vis du simple fait qu’elle aurait à le lire aussi. 
Je me suis sentie mal à l’aise durant toute ma lecture et je ne pouvais pas vraiment pointer pourquoi. Peut-être que ce type de récit n’est pas pour moi, mais j’ai tendance à aimer les histoires étranges, peut-être que les scènes sexuelles étaient trop présentes pour rien au final, mais je ne suis pas dérangée par si peu normalement, ou peut-être aies-je juste trouvé que le fil rouge de l’histoire manquait d’intérêt. 
Au moins, j’espère que mes annotations ont fait rire Cécile. 

Je sais que beaucoup de personne ont trouvé la plume poétique, provoquante, innovatrice. 
Et je demanderai simple à ces personnes si elles ont lu Le Festin Nu de William Burroughs?
Car il y a deux points dans ce livre qui me dérange énormément. 
Les scènes de sexe complètement inutiles et la présence de William Burroughs comme personnage. 

Si nous mettons de côté le plan à trois et le reste, the simple fait que l’autrice l’ait utilisé comme un point de vue m’a dérange, d’autant plus que leur style d’écrite tend à imiter le sien et que nous n’avons pas de preuves que, tout toxicomane qu’il soit, W.B. aurait réagi de la sorte. 

A l’image du Festin Nu, Luckenbooth est à la fois intriguant par son étrangeté et repoussant de par sa narration. Un fouillis de phrases essayant d’être poétique et de scènes surréalistes qui amène l’histoire à une simple vengeance. 

ATTENTION : Si vous lisez cette revue sur votre smartphone les spoilers commencent ici !
<spoiler> 

Quand j’ai compris que Jessie ne serait pas l’un des points de vue principaux tout au long de l’histoire, je dois reconnaître que j’ai été franchement agacée. J’ai acheté ce livre en pensant que j’aurai une bonne histoire automnale sur la fille du Diable, le pouvoir et les rumeurs d’Edinburg. Je n’avais pas prévu de lire un livre sur la fille du Diable, devenue le Diable elle-même après lui avoir dévoré le cœur si vous voulez mon avis, utilisant les habitants de l’immeuble pour se venger, elle, son amante et leur fille. 
Dès que j’ai commencé ma lecture, avec cet étrange plan à trois, j’ai su que j’allais tomber sur mon nez. 
J’ai tendance à aimer la belle prose, l’écriture poétique, j’adore ça même mais ici tout m’a semblé être de trop. Certains points de vue étaient intéressants et utilement liés à Jessie mais d’autres étaient juste inutiles, comme pour W.B. qui vraiment n’avait rien à faire là. 
Pour être parfaitement honnête, si ce n’était pas pour mon amie et notre projet, je l’aurai DNF. 
</spoiler>


Jade Flynn

3.5/5

Part 1 - 5/5, Part 2 - 4/5, Part 3 - 2/5

Chaya Vervaecke

I originally went to the bookstore to buy a book I had had my eyes on for a while but as I was looking at the other books I suddenly saw this one. There was only one left and the cover immediately caught my eye. I read the back and I wanted to know more. 
This was beautifully written. Although it was a truly truly beautiful book I had a very hard time getting into it. Maybe I didn’t read it at the right time and should’ve waited but it’s definitely worth a read and maybe even a re-read to truly appreciate Jenni Fagan’s writing skills.

Laura Dobie

An absorbing and unsettling supernatural story, which follows the lives of different residents of a cursed Edinburgh tenement over the course of a century. There’s a real sense of place, and its scathing critique of Edinburgh past is pertinent to the present.

Luckenbooth

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