Alluringly atmospheric and piercingly witty, Barker’s dazzling, gothic coming-of-age story reflects the refuge and joy to be found in nature and literature amidst an isolated life, as richly resonant today as at the time of its original publication.
Our Scottish Book of the Month for October 2021
With a new introduction from Maggie O'Farrell
Janet lies murdered beneath the castle stairs, oddly attired in her mother's black lace wedding dress, lamented only by her pet jackdaw...
In this, her first novel, Elspeth Barker evokes the unrelenting chill of Calvinism and the Scottish climate; it's a world of isolation and loneliness, where Barker's young protagonist turns to increasingly to literature, nature, and her risque Aunt Lila, who offer brief flashes of respite in an otherwise dank and foreboding life.
People, birds and beasts move in a gleeful danse macabre through the lowering landscape in a tale that is as rich and atmospheric as it is witty and mordant. The family motto - Moriens sed Invictus (Dying but Unconquered) - is a fitting epitaph for wild, courageous Janet, and her determination to remain steadfastly herself even as events overtake her.
Publisher: Orion Publishing Co
ISBN: 9781474620512
Number of pages: 224
Weight: 204 g
Dimensions: 200 x 126 x 20 mm
A sparky, funny work of genius about class, romanticism, social tradition and literary tradition, and one of the best least-known novels of the 20th century - Ali Smith
A surreal, hilarious and dark story of a troubled adolescence deep in the wilds of Scotland - Maggie O'Farrell
Elspeth Barker's is a wholly original literary voice. O CALEDONIA, first published 20 years ago, reads as freshly now as then. Steeped in classical allusions, rich in Scottish - and natural - history, fantastical in its highly wrought characters, this coming-of-age-novella is as passionately intense as it is wittily acerbic... Propelled by the sheer force of words, the horrors and humours plunge on, observed by an eye both youthful and perspicacious... The reader feels unalloyed joy, and occasional winces, on every page - The Independent
This is an extraordinary novel: original, beautiful yet tough (Barker loves jaggy, spiky words such as "monkey puzzle", "azaleas", "horizon", anything with a "z" in it), with a sympathetic outsider of a heroine whose tragic fate is depicted on the very first page, puncturing any kind of narrative tension but capturing our attention nevertheless. Few see colour in a grey Scottish day the way Barker does, when a dying winter sun "sheds an unearthly glory; shafting drifts of crimson, green and blue, alive with whirling atoms of dust ..." And yet this darkly magical tale has been forgotten, displaced in the pantheon of great Scottish writing by other, supposedly tougher, work... Barker's love of the classics, her focus on mothers and daughters, and her remarkable evocation of landscape, should mark her out as one of Scotland's principal writers, but fashion and the politics of literary movements have skimmed over her. - Financial Times
An absolute sumptuous treat of a book - Elizabeth Macneal
O Caledonia is a Gothic coming-of-age story, the Brontes and Poe via Dodie Smith and Edward Gorey. Funny, surprising, exquisitely written -and brilliant on the smelly, absurd, harsh business of growing-up. - David Nicholls
O Caledonia is an absolute freak show of brilliance; dark and hilarious and dreadful in the best way imaginable. I wish I'd written it. - Louisa Young
I was more than thirty years late to this book (story of my life!) and only started to read it after seeing a conversation about it on social media. My London flatmate of almost forty years ago declared it one of her... More
This is a magnificent book and definitely in my top ten of best novels ever. The main character is Janet whose 16 short years of life are described in this book. She is one of several children growing up in a chilly... More
‘’At night, when the moon is high it beams through the dying cockatoo and casts his blood drops in a chain of rubies on to the flagstones of the hall. Here it was that Janet was found, oddly attired in her mother’s... More
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