Sally Magnusson’s first novel, The Sealwoman's Gift, was excellent so I’d been waiting with baited breath for her second. The historical background is the building of the aqueduct system from Loch Katrine to the Milngavie Reservoir to supply the City of Glasgow with fresh drinking water. Cholera was rife so this was a very forward thinking public health programme for its time. The system was opened by Queen Victoria in 1859 and has been supplying clean drinking water to the city ever since so, from a local point of view, the historical details were really interesting. In particular, I enjoyed learning about the engineering difficulties encountered and overcome, and the dreadful living and working conditions of the 3,000 or so navvies whose temporary living quarters were nicknamed Sebastopol after the Crimean battle.

This wasn’t the main plot, however. It centred around the camp doctor’s wife, Isabel Aird, who has suffered a series of miscarriages, and her relationship with Robert Kirke, an Episcopalian minister who is famous for writing a book on fairy lore and superstition and whose grave is still to be seen in Aberfoyle churchyard, just a short distance from Loch Katrine. The problem is that he died two centuries before they met. Herein lies my problem with this book. I don’t like magical realism and that aspect of the story was just too silly for me and became ever sillier as the book drew to a close. When he died, it was rumoured that Kirke had ‘gone to faery’ and Doon Hill, Aberfoyle, where this is supposed to have happened, is still a place of fairy lore and superstition today. People still tie ribbons and favours to the tree at the top of the hill. Kirke’s reappearance 200 years later is a journey to seek rest in peace, away from fairyland, but to say any more would be to spoil the plot for other readers.

I also felt that some of the subplots were too contrived. Isabel’s visit to the Saltmarket to see Annie’s sister, Nancy, was a means to describe the desperate living conditions of the poor. Would a West End lady really have made the journey there at that time other than for philanthropic purposes? Isabel did nothing to help Nancy which did not ring true with her character. Nor, for me, did the personal lives of Victoria and Albert have more than a tenuous link with the storyline.

Sally Magnusson is an excellent, intelligent writer. In her first two works of fiction she has written about interesting historical events. The Ninth Child just didn’t work for me, however, and so I didn’t particularly enjoy it. 3 stars because it is a very well written book but it disappointed me. I will still be hoping Sally writes a third novel though.

With thanks to John Murray Press and NetGalley for a review copy.