| dc.description.abstract | Luckenbooth is a novel inspired by Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. It is set in an Edinburgh tenement
building and concerns the metamorphosis of the residents’ lives over nine decades. The purpose of
setting the novel over such a long period of time is to be able to show how society changes but also
remains the same. The aim is to represent how wider societal structures regarding the evolution of
society impact upon the individual. Each story concerns itself with a protagonist whose life is in
some way peripheral to mainstream society, or who is responding to the centre from a point of Otherness. Famously, the opening line of The Metamorphosis sees travelling salesman Gregor Samsa
awake as an undefined yet monstrous creature. Kafka’s opening is a climax that is unravelled
through the entire story. In a similar vein, the characters’ lives in Luckenbooth are woven together
by a main event that impacts on the structure and narrative. In this way my opening includes a delayed climax that can only be fully resolved at the end of the novel. Luckenbooth begins in 1910
when the devil’s daughter, Jessie MacRae leaves her Father’s corpse rammed on a clifftop on a
small island in the Highlands. She gets into a coffin her Father built for her and rows across the
North Sea to Edinburgh. She begins a job at No. 10 Luckenbooth Close for the Minister of Culture.
She is to be a surrogate for Mr Udnam and his fiancee. An extremely violent event occurs and Jessie
MacRae curses no.10 Luckenbooth Close and the lives of its residents for the next hundred years.
Structurally the building houses the curse much in the same way that Gregor Samsa’s body defines
his fate. In flat 1F1, 1910 we have Jessie MacRae, in the 1920s, a young woman (who used to be
male) is going to a drag ball in 2F2, 1930s sees a young civil rights activist from Louisiana, living
in 3F3 and working at the Bone Library Royal Dick Vet. Ivy Proudfoot is a young woman training
to be a spy in the war in the 1940s. There is a seance in the 1950s that exposes much of what
happed to Jessie MacRae. Beat poet William Burroughs is doing cut ups in the 1960s and attending
the famous 1962 Writers Conference at Edinburgh International Book Festival. In the 1970s an
Edinburgh gang fights the Triads. A miner who has a phobia of light tries to care for his niece in the
1980s. The last decade occurs on Hogmanay 2000 where a cosmic agent called Dot exposes all the
secrets hidden in Luckenbooth Close for a hundred years. I wanted the final voice to be that of
Jessie MacRae so we conclude by going back to the event alluded to at the very start of the novel
and she tells us in her voice exactly how this all began.
The accompanying critical essay Luckenbooth / ‘The Metamorphosis of a Novel (Inspired by Kafka’s The Metamorphosis) explores how the influence of Kafka’s Metamorphosis informed my re search for Luckenbooth. It discusses many of the academic texts around Kafka and Metamorphosis
which deepened my understanding of why this story had called out to me so strongly as a literary
artist. The essay discusses Kafka’s influences both theoretically and creatively to see how they influenced his ideology. Kafka referred to his life as literature. The art of life is something Foucault
saw as part of the practice of literature. In between these theories I explore how my own fundamental approach to art, literature and life has encompassed the influence of Kafka’s Metamorphosis and
how it underpins my entire approach to Luckenbooth. | en |
