O Caledonia – Elspeth Barker (1991)

O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker was a novel I hadn’t even heard of until very recently. With W&N Essentials reissuing it last year this 1991 novel has been enjoying something of a renaissance. Several other bloggers, including Jacqui had been very enthusiastic about it, and I bought it following those reviews, knowing it would be right up my street.

It is a darkly, strange coming of age novel set in a draughty Scottish castle. As others have said previously, this is a novel with shades of Dodie Smith, Barbara Comyns and Shirley Jackson. It is a wonderfully imaginative novel, slightly gothic in tone, it is rich in vivid imagery, and beautifully written.

“Vera was painting the pony’s hooves gold in the dining room; Janet said this was bad for him; poison would seep into his bloodstream.”

The novel starts with a death, a murder in fact. Sixteen year old Janet, dressed in her mother’s black, lace evening gown lies at the bottom of a stone staircase in the Scottish castle where she had grown up. However, this is not a crime novel or a mystery to be solved, it is revealed almost at once that Janet’s murderer has been caught and locked up. Instead this is the story of Janet’s too short life. After her death, there seems to be little or no regret, she is dispensed with in the usual way, and then forgotten about. It’s a cold, tragic way for a young life to end.

“After that, only the speywives, the fishwives, the midwives, the ill-wishers spoke of her, endlessly rehearsing a litany of blame; for blame there must be, and no one could blame the murderer. Their voices whined and droned, spiteful as the sleety wind which slashed their headscarves across their faces as they huddled by the village bus stop, dreary as the wind which spat hail down the chimney as they took Sunday afternoon tea in the cold parlours of outlying crofts, where the Bible was open beside a ticking clock and rock buns were assembled on snowy doilies, malignly aglitter with the menace of carbonised currants. So they blamed the mother for giving the child all those books to read.”

The first few years of Janet’s life, during the War, are spent in Glasgow, with her mother Vera, and her grandfather in a manse by the sea while her father Hector is away fighting. On his return the family move to the remote castle, where roses refuse to grow. Four more siblings quickly follow. Janet’s life here is one full of misunderstanding. The oldest of five siblings, she is always at odds with the adults in her life. Janet is not like her siblings, they are more conventional, smooth haired and more attractive – her whole life, Janet was the outsider within her own family.

Cousin Lila – a cousin by marriage really – also lives in the castle, an arrangement under the terms of Hector’s inheritance. The Russian born, whisky drinking Lila is also an outsider, so it’s probably not surprising that Janet is drawn to her. Poor Janet is always getting into trouble, sometimes because she makes a mistake or doesn’t quite understand – yet everyone around her seems convinced that she is naughty, wilful and doing things deliberately. Janet withdraws more and more into her own world. She loves the wild landscape around the castle, she is at one with the natural world, her own fantastic imagination, and her love of books. She has a pet jackdaw, Claws who takes up residence in the doll’s house that was bought for her but she never played with.

“He was free to range wherever he wished; always he came back to her and at night they repaired to her room, where he roosted like a guardian spirit on the Iron rail of her bed. He was a magic bird. She loved him more than she had loved anything, anything or anyone.”

During her teenage years Janet is packed off to a boarding school, miles away. Being away from the landscape she so loves is hard on this lonely girl, who even at school makes no real friends. She finds her own way to survive it, books and her imagination her saving grace. It turns out that sport is very important at this school, but Janet loathes sport, and doesn’t do well when she tries, so she throws herself into her schoolwork, much to the disgust of her peers.

The older Janet gets, the nearer the end we get. Barker has created a wonderfully memorable character in Janet, she has a rich, creative inner life and we wonder what she might have become. There is a terrible sadness in the fact Janet never finds the tenderness and understanding that she should have had.

“And there had been the occasion when a friend of her parents had told them she thought Janet had a lovely face. Vera had reported this in accents of astonishment. Janet’s delight had rapidly turned to fear. She must never again meet this woman in case she changed her mind.”

We know of course from the first page how this story will end, and there is a dark poignancy to this lonely, life, but Barker’ storytelling is perfectly balanced. So, in the same way the reader accepts the darkness at the heart of the stories of Muriel Spark and Beryl Bainbridge so we accept this one. Perhaps it helps to know right from the start where we are going, there’s no point lying awake worrying about this character.

Well everyone who said I would love this novel was right, I did. Barker’s descriptions of the natural world are beautiful, shot through with little nuggets of surrealism and gothic imagery – and it seems I never tire of coming of age tales.