The billows washed into Janet’s face, the wind took her breath, she clung to the mane, elemental air and water, terror and ecstasy. She could die like this and never know the difference, horsed on the sightless couriers of the air. [loc. 1710]
O Caledonia opens with the murder of sixteen-year-old Janet, and then flashes back to her short, unhappy but vividly beautiful life. Janet is a misfit in her family: poorly parented, fonder of animals than of humans (who behave inexplicably and unpredictably), intelligent, romantic, solitary. She is an utterly charming and relatable protagonist, though I do sympathise (a little) with her parents. I saw myself in Janet who, given a pram to play with, repurposes it as a chariot for Dandelion, the family's apex predator: 'so long as in transit he could gnaw at a sparrow’s wing or other pungent trophy from his lair'. Dandelion is not the only excellent cat in this novel: also of note is Mouflon, Aunt Lila's cat, who caused the death of Lila's husband. By way of contrast, when Janet and her brother Francis are presented with a new baby sister, they bury her under a heap of earth and dead leaves.
Janet's perception of the world is marvellously rich and voluptuous. There are hints of synaesthesia, and vivid multisensory responses to words: "...she intended to be a princess... she loved the word, with its tight beginning and its rustling, cascading end, like the gown a princess would wear, with a tiny waist and ruffles and trains of swirling silken skirts. Purple of course" [loc. 241]. The sheer exuberance of her solitary experiences in the wilderness surrounding Auchnasaugh Castle, the rambling family home, is uplifting -- and in sharp contrast to Janet's misery in the company of her family, and especially at boarding school.
For some reason -- perhaps the comparisons to I Capture the Castle and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, perhaps the measured and precise prose -- I'd assumed O Caledonia was written in the 1950s (when it's set) or a little later. No: Elspeth Barker's only novel, it was published in 1991, to great acclaim.
I bought this in April 2022, and finally read it as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list.
Maggie O'Farrell's introduction drew me in when I read the sample chapters...
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