Sally Magnusson: The Ninth Child

Bestselling author, journalist and broadcaster Sally Magnusson will be discussing her latest novel, ‘The Ninth Child’ at the AK Bell Library this April.

Inspired by the mysterious death of the seventeenth-century minister Robert Kirke and the experiences of Sally’s great grandmother, and set in a pivotal era when engineering innovation flourished but women did not, The Ninth Child blends folklore with historical realism in a spellbinding narrative.

Sally Magnusson said: ‘In The Ninth Child I wanted to explore the collision of ancient with modern, folklore with historical reality. What would happen, I thought if the Robert Kirke of local legend were to return when rock and earth were being exploded to make a tunnel for the great Victorian waterworks? What if that return were dependent on a deadly bargain? What if that bargain brought him into the life of a well-bred city woman with a weight of grief on her and not enough to do? While working on the novel, I walked the shores of Loch Chon, the Dog Loch, and imagined it changing before Isabel’s eyes as the tunnel took shape and mountains of detritus turned the tree-girt slopes into a wasteland. It’s an ambiguous setting: in the depths of the lovely loch lies horror…’

Sally has written several books, most recently her Sunday Times bestseller, Where Memories Go (2014) about her mother's dementia, and The Sealwomen’s Gift (2018), her acclaimed debut novel set in Iceland in the seventeenth century.

Sally has inherited a rich storytelling tradition from her Scottish and Icelandic forebearsSally has inherited a rich storytelling tradition from her Scottish and Icelandic forebears. The Sealwomen’s Gift was a Radio 2 Book Club and ITV Zoe Ball Book Club selection and was shortlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award, the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year, the Paul Torday Memorial Prize, the McKitterick Prize, the Waverton Good Read Award and the HWA Debut Fiction Crown.

Sally Magnusson is the eldest daughter of the Icelandic journalist and broadcaster Magnus Magnusson and the Scottish newspaper journalist Mamie Baird. She grew up in and around Glasgow in houses that were always filled with stories: the journalistic variety in which both parents were continually engaged; those hilariously told by her mother about her early life in working-class Rutherglen; and those told by Magnus straight from the medieval Icelandic sagas which he spent much of her childhood translating from Old Norse into English.

Working herself as a newspaper reporter and then a broadcast journalist Sally also delights in fashioning other people’s experiences (and sometimes her own) into articles, programmes and non-fiction books.

Sally Magnusson will be discussing her latest book at the AK Bell Library in Perth, on Tuesday, 28th April at 7pm.