Essence of Edinburgh by Jenni Calder: Book Review

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Essence of Edinburgh, part-history part-travel and part personal reminiscence, but on the whole I did enjoy it. In it Jenni Calder takes a trip around Edinburgh, her home (and mine) for many, many years.

Her theme, if there is a theme, is that Edinburgh has what she calls a duality, a split personality, andI think I’d concur with that, but I’m not sure she fully illustrates it. The book moves around in a sensible enough way — there are chapters on the geology and topography, the festivals, its river and other elements that make up this unique assembly of buildings and individuals. The historical strand in the book is by far the best of it, and I learned a lot about a city I thought I knew well. I particularly enjoyed the opening, at the Heart of Midlothian itself, and how she begins to explore the city from there.

I enjoyed the writing, although there were one or two places where a jump from one thing to another was more than confusing (for example, at one point a paragraph about George IV’s visit concludes with the observation that ‘Seven years later William Burke was hanged and William Hare was released from jail’, a non-sequitur that had me scratching my head as I tried to work out the connection).

If I had a problem with it it’s that we don’t hear the author’s voice nearly enough. The quotations from books about Edinburgh are extensive to the point of being overwhelming. There can barely be a well-kent writer who features the city who doesn’t get a mention. Jenni Calder doesn’t just quote the oldies like Scott and Stevenson, but more modern writers such as Rankin and Spark, and a whole load of others who are unfamiliar to me. It’s fine up to a point, but for a book that claims to be ‘a personal journey — and eccentric odyssey’ I found it a little bit unbalanced, and I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the chapters I enjoyed most are those where she writes about the outlying areas, where there are fewer quotations and more original input.

Jenni Calder writes well and fluently, and I would have liked to have heard more of her own words and less of those of others.

Thanks to Netgalley and Luath Press for an ARC of this book in return for an honest review.