Robin Jenkins was a prolific Scottish writer whose work spanned five decades. Although he achieved critical acclaim with The Cone-Gatherers, despite his impressive literary output he struggled to get published at various points in his writing life, and his previous books went in and out of print. Having experienced Jenkins' writing for the first time with Poverty Castle (which isn't one of his better known books), I'm calling this out as an absolute travesty. Shame on those UK publishers for denying this wonderful writer the success he deserved!

Poverty Castle takes the form of a novel within a novel, although the story of the novelist writing the book is a light touch, taking up a small percentage of the novel. That being said, it adds depth of poignancy to the overall story that is brilliant in both its subtly and gentleness. The writer (semi-autobiographical, by all accounts) is an elderly Scottish author who has struggled with writing success yet can't live without it. He knows he is writing his last novel, and is fixated with writing one "that is a celebration of goodness, without any need of irony". His long-suffering wife is exasperated by how much the book is taking out of him, yet despite herself slowly becomes equally charmed and beguiled by his characters.

The characters in question are the enigmatic Sempill family who are middle-class by birth but recent acquirers of a bequeathed fortune. With a charming, idealist father and ethereal mother who is obsessed with giving her husband a son, the five daughters are brought up in a self-sufficient Eden with a strong sense of social justice and encouragement to voice their opinions. With little to test their true moral fibre whilst they remain cocooned in their own idyll, as they grow older and inevitably flee the nest the writer calls into question whether their magnetic and radiating presence comes from an authentic goodness, or is ultimately a product of wealthy privilege and their own self-importance / self-delusion.

I hugely enjoyed the writing in this book. It pulled me in from the first sentence and kept me there until the last. Why I am the only person on LT to have reviewed this book is beyond me. If you enjoy old fashioned writing such as Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle then I think you'll enjoy this one.

I'll definitely be seeking out more of Jenkins' work. In the meantime, here's a great article that provides an interesting angle on the problem of being Robin Jenkins:

https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/2009/11/goodness-in-a-fallen-world-the-fat....

4.5 stars - perhaps this book doesn't deserve for me to have fallen for it as much as I did, but Jenkins charmed me with his own old-fashioned goodness. ( )