Luckenbooth, Jenni Fagan

I loved this story, or series of inter-affected stories. It is very colourful and 'cool' in a sort of sexy, alternative, steam punk and magic sort of way. It's hard to know where it's going at first, but has a satisfying conclusion. 

Fagan tells the story of inhabitants of a tenement building in Edinburgh, over decades. It is told in a few parts, with three connected stories from different years in each part. This is mildly disorientating, but you don't feel like you're missing something, rather that maybe time is not as important as we think. The structure of vignettes allows Fagan to look at different sorts of lives and relationships, and wax lyrical on opinions from writing to landlords and social housing. Darkly colourful and robust. 

Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Wolf

Reading Mrs Dalloway nowadays is more escapism that it would have been when it was published for sure. It is a snapshot of a sunny summer day in London in the 1920s, though the narrative is dark in places. It is very clever, the way it weaves in and out of perspectives. It says something of different experiences of the same events, and of life in general; people's opinions of and reactions to one another. It also talks about expectations and realities of life, in a realistic and unsensationalised way. Another one where you can see why it's known.