O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker

One of the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge prompts this year is to read a book your friend recommended, so I asked TJC for a couple of recommendations and that's how O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker came across my path. I had never even heard of the book before this recommendation, but there I was waiting for more than three months to get an ebook copy from the library (this book is more than 30 years old - why was this wait so long?).  

In a tangent you loyal readers are used to, I'd like to just comment that Elspeth is an awesome name. I've never met an Elspeth. How did Elizabeth/Elisabeth get so much more popular? Aren't they name equivalents? I have QUESTIONS.

The copy I'm reading does have the introduction by Maggie O'Farrell (author of Hamnet) and since I had never even heard of the book, I read it with some great interest.

"On one level, it's possible to read O Caledonia as an autobiographical fiction: the strict upbringing in a windy castle, the fiercely bright and non-conformist heroine who finds love and companionship in the animal kingdom...To give it the most vague and limiting of categories - the coming-of-age novel - is to miss its point..." (page xii)

So what is it about, Ms O'Farrell?

"Janet's struggle is universally that of the individual against the forces of authority: it is the fight to maintain one's identity against powerful odds. It is the conundrum of how to become the person you need to be while all those around you desire you to be someone else." (page xii-xiii)

I'm pretty sure I'm missing some subtle nuance here, but isn't she just describing a particular type of coming-of-age story?  I mean, this book is a coming-of-age story about a girl growing up in a creepy castle in Scotland in the mid-20th century. Janet is, I suspect, neurodivergent in a time when that wasn't really diagnosed or discussed. She's sort of weird, sort of mean, constantly seeking for approval she's never going to get, making bad decisions all over the place, and we learn within the first two pages that Janet's hard life ends with her being murdered.

So it's hard to read this book knowing that poor misunderstood Janet is going to come to a bad end. It's also hard to read how badly she was mistreated because people just didn't understand her. It's also atmospheric, moody, and delightfully written.  

Evidence that Janet is neurodivergent:

Janet had no hope of ever being tidy: her hair grew wilder and frizzier, escaping from its pigtails, tangling in everything it touched; her hair ribbons fell off, her buttons pinged to the floor, she tripped over and collided with objects so often that she had to have a special eyesight test. (page 31)

Dyspraxia can often co-occur with autism, ADHD, and some mental health conditions. It really wasn't until I lived with my husband that I learned most adults don't whack their limbs against tables, chairs, walls, and doorways on a near daily basis. 

It was a dank, misty day and Janet wore her new tweed suit. It prickled incessantly and drove her to such a point of irritation that she did not feel car sick on the journey. Her legs felt strange and suffocated in their wrappings of twenty-denier nylon. (page 161)

Some folks with autism really struggle with hypersensitivity about the clothing they were. I know that I will not be wearing anything that isn't cotton or wool at this point in my life. 

She loved addresses; she had memorised the St. Uncumba’s list of five hundred, imagining each one, furnishing it, in some cases providing gardens or parkland, in others, lamplit alleyways where assassins prowled. (page 164)

What a strange thing to obsessively learn, right?  

I didn't always like Janet, but I felt like I really understood her, in a deep and profound way. I imagine if I'd read this when I was 12-15, Janet would be just as beloved a character to me as Francie Nolan.  

4/5 stars for this coming-of-age novel, with all due respect to Maggie O'Farrell.

Lines of note:

She was bad and she knew she was bad and she could see no end to it. (page 33)

Awwww. Poor Janet. She did not have any resources to help her control her quirks.

Janet had heard Vera telling her friend Constance that she only really liked babies and found children annoying. (page 45)

What a thing for a child to overhear her mother say.

At Auchnasaugh she had been neither happy nor unhappy, passing her days in reading, dreaming, painting watercolours of animals, landscape, mushrooms, and politely refusing all contact with the world beyond the glen. (page 49)

Shades of What Moves the Dead/"The Fall of the House of Usher." Mostly the mushrooms.

It was a rigorous life, but for Janet it was softened by the landscape, by reading, and by animals whom she found it possible to love without qualification. (page 58)

This is another reason why Janet appealed to me so much. Yes, it was challenging for me growing up in an isolated farmhouse, but I got to read and play with cats and dogs, so it wasn't all bad, was it?

The snow had stopped and the stars glittered in myriads. She had forgotten that the heavens held so many. (page 95)

If you live in a city and visit a more rural area, the stars will shock you every time.

She was like one of those seething, stinking mud spouts which boil up in Iceland and lob burning rocks at passers-by. (page 123)

Oh, who doesn't understand the anger of teenage hormones?

The start of each day was nerve-wracking. (page 137)

Right? Every day I wake up not knowing what's going on and it's so stressful. 

Looking at her, Janet thought in sharp sorrow, "I will not see this again," for now the labrador could scarcely walk; her hind legs were emaciated and she had to be helped in and out and up the stairs. (page 153)

So evocative. So sad.

Things I looked up:

Jeyes Fluid (page 47) - a disinfectant brand for external purposes only, frequently used for cleaning paths, patios, greenhouses, driveways, and the like.

rutilant (page 48) - glowing or glittering with red or golden light

capercailzie (page 77) - large grouse (bird)

Source

squamous (page 165) - scaly

jabots (page 170) - a decorative clothing-accessory consisting of lace or other fabric falling from the throat, suspended from or attached to a neckband or collar, or simply pinned at the throat; frilly ruff

Source

Obligatory hat finds:

However, this hill church suited Nanny, whose hat, Janet noticed, bristled with more hatpins than any other of the fierce felt hats in the assembly. (page 38)

But it was enough to sit in that rosy hush and feel its benediction, watch the hard faces of the women in their hats grow gentle and animated. (page 68)

...doffs his plumy hat, and bows...(page 110)

...pigeon was walking in slow circles on the shining cobbles; it wore a little paper hat. (page 111)

...hat like a tea cosy. (page 117)