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O Caledonia: A Novel
O Caledonia: A Novel
O Caledonia: A Novel
Ebook198 pages3 hours

O Caledonia: A Novel

By Elspeth Barker and Maggie O'Farrell

4/5

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In the tradition of Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a darkly humorous modern classic of Scottish literature about a doomed adolescent growing up in the mid-19th century—featuring a new introduction by Maggie O’Farrell, award-winning author of Hamnet.

Janet lies murdered beneath the castle stairs, attired in her mother’s black lace wedding dress, lamented only by her pet jackdaw…

​Author Elspeth Barker masterfully evokes the harsh climate of Scotland in this atmospheric gothic tale that has been compared to the works of the Brontës, Edgar Allan Poe, and Edward Gorey. Immersed in a world of isolation and loneliness, Barker’s ill-fated young heroine Janet turns to literature, nature, and her Aunt Lila, who offers brief flashes of respite in an otherwise foreboding life. People, birds, and beasts move through the background in a tale that is as rich and atmospheric as it is witty and mordant. The family’s motto—Moriens sed Invictus (Dying but Unconquered)—is a well-suited epitaph for wild and courageous Janet, whose fierce determination to remain steadfastly herself makes her one of the most unforgettable protagonists in contemporary literature.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherScribner
Release dateJun 14, 2022
ISBN9781668004623
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Author

Elspeth Barker

In her career as a novelist and journalist, Elspeth Barker wrote for The Independent, The Observer (London), The Sunday Times (London), London Review of Books, and many others. Elspeth also taught Latin at what she described as a naughty girls’ school on the Norfolk coast and worked as a tutor and lecturer in creative writing at the Norwich School of Art and Design. She published her first novel, O Caledonia, at the age of fifty-one. O Caledonia was awarded the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. Elspeth was married to the poet George Barker and died in 2022.

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Reviews for O Caledonia

4/5

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  • 5/5
    Spell-bonding. Catches you up in the highland mists of Scotland, in dark corners of cold castles and inside lonely teenage girls’ minds. Very Edgar Allen Poe without the violence but full of a darkening mood and sombre sentiment.
  • 5/5
    I was introduced to this novel when a sample of it was used as a reading comprehension exercise in my English class at school. I really enjoyed the evocative writing, particularly the descriptions of spools of thread in a haberdashery and a small stuffed donkey, and the main character, Janet, came across very strongly. She is stubborn, imaginative (at times to the point of delusion), and apparently disliked by most of the other characters. The novel essentially tells her life story, starting off with Janet as a difficult young child dealing with the birth of two younger siblings, and continuing through to adolescence, with the family living in a remote castle where her parents run a boys' school. I can understand to a certain extent why the other characters (including her parents) feel as they do about Janet, but on the whole she seems badly done by. She is, either way, a fascinating young girl, with a rich internal life, and makes for a delicious novel.
  • 5/5
    Written by the eldest daughter of the Headmaster of Drumtochty Castle Prep School, which my husband had the good fortune/misfortune to attend in the 1950s-60s. Hilarious reading, but apparently very much like the reality.
  • 5/5
    O Caledonia refuses to be put into a box. It's about the coming of age of a girl, Janet, but it's also about families, loneliness, the power of story - and oh, yes, there's a good amount of Gothic atmosphere thrown in, too. Janet is a fantastic character. She is selfish but caring, brash but tender-hearted, sympathetic but harsh. Within the same paragraph the reader will alternately pity and disavow her, all for it to change again in the next. There are few characters as compelling as Janet in literature, and it's a testament to Barker's ability to have crafted her so well in so relatively few pages. Barker's prose is vivid, and it sucks you in from the very first page. Auchnasaugh feels alive through Janet's eyes, and her unwavering loyalty to it is like that of a family member - indeed, she seems to perhaps feel as though it is more family than her own blood. The family dynamics are fascinating, a train wreck you can't look away from, and there is sympathy to be had for all involved. I would highly recommend this book to any fans of literary fiction, Gothic fiction, or classic literature. This ticks all the boxes you could want in a good read, and it leaves you with that tingly "I just read something special" feeling you only get every once in a blue moon.Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for providing a copy of this reissue for review.
  • 4/5
    I am sorry to say that I had never heard of this novel until I read a short article about it in The Guardian newspaper by Maggie O’Farrell, who also wrote the introduction to the recently re-released edition that I read.As a novel it defies easy categorisation, combining elements of history, nature and almost Gothic horror as it tells the life of Janet, a challenging young woman who seemed to spend her life at odds with everyone whom she encountered. As a loner, despite four siblings, she found her greatest refuge in books, of which she was a precocious and prodigious reader. The book also offers an intriguing insight into life in Scotland in the early years after the Second World War. Janet’s family are fairly affluent by normal standards, living in a large house in the Highlands. While there may be sufficient financial resource, there is little in the way of society. The local population are far from welcoming of anyone, and quickly develop deep-rooted suspicions of everyone up at ’The Big House’ (or, more probably, ‘The Big Hoose’).There is a strong feeling of melancholy, not least because we learn in the first few sentences that Janet will be murdered while still a teenager. The book is not, however, the story of her life. It is more a series of hilarious snapshots as she grows up, She is also far from a wholly sympathetic character – she is selfish, often heartless and sometimes downright cruel. She is never boring, though, and the book is almost hypnotic, ensnaring the reader from the first page.I am confused as to why it is not better known, and how it had faded from the public consciousness. It definitely deserves to be better known.
  • 4/5
    his is Janet's story, from her birth during WWII at her grandfather's home by the sea in southern Scotland, through her miserable boarding school years when she is surrounded by Philistines, to her death at sixteen in her family's grim highland castle. Janet's father believes that girls are an inferior kind of boy, while her mother likes babies and doesn't like her two eldest, Janet and her arrogant, frighteningly self-possessed brother Francis. Janet is not at all self-possessed: she notices only what interests her, retreats into her imagination, and can't be trusted. She's compassionate towards animals but doesn't like people.This is a tragedy about an intelligent, unhappy, friendless, doomed misfit, but it's leavened with the humour of the ridiculous situations that Janet finds herself in, and a cast of exaggerated comic characters.O Caledonia is strange, short, and well worth reading.
  • 5/5
    What a wonderful novel. I had never heard of this until it was recommended on A Good Read on Radio 4 in the UK.Wow! Just wow, what a wonderful book. I’m reeling from finishing it and trying to make sense of it but it's a book I will come back to.

Book preview

O Caledonia - Elspeth Barker

Chapter One

The sixteen years of Janet’s life began in wartime on a fog-bound winter night in Edinburgh. Her father came home on leave and looked into the blue wicker basket. He strode to the window and stared out at the discreet square of Georgian houses and the snow dripping from the bare trees. It’s about the size of a cat, he said.

He returned to the war, and Janet and her mother went to live with his parents by the sea. The house was a square Edwardian manse, damp, dark, and uncomfortable as Scottish houses are, but set solid against the sea winds, facing inland into a beautiful garden and affording a warren-like sense of safety in its winding, stone-flagged passages, baize doors, and lamplit rooms where Grandpa wrote his sermons, his parrot made proclamations, and the blackout nightly excluded the warring world. The nursery in the attic overlooked the sea and Janet slept to the sound of foghorns booming out in icy waters; the lighthouse swept its beam over her ceiling, a powerful guardian. She woke to the cries of gulls. Someone gave her a purple silk flower, and she watched it growing towards her through the bars of her cot, as it came out of dimness, its petals lapped in all shades of mauve, violet, heliotrope. She did not know then that it was a flower but, as she lay gazing at it and as the days went by, she loved purple with an intensity that remained always. In that first memory she had found entrancement.

And so the babe grew, among her adoring grandparents, her anxious mother, and Nanny, in her blue print uniform, Nanny who knew best and could control the ceaseless battle for possession which raged between Ningning the grandmother and Vera, the mother. When Janet was fourteen months old, her brother, Francis, was born, and this brought about a change in the balance of power, for now Ningni