#Elspeth Barker

[virgin-martyr]

'You’re a big girl now.' She didn’t want to be a big girl. It seemed she was punished for something which happened without her choice or knowledge.

Elspeth Barker, excerpt from O Caledonia

[hairtusk]

'To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies?' Well, she knew the name of that altar, the dim, blood-boultered altar of womanhood.

Elspeth Barker, O Caledonia (1991)

[alightinthelantern]

best of the bunch: phenomenal novels read in 2022-23 that I highly recommend

O Caledonia (Elspeth Barker)

Inland (Téa Obreht)

Temporary People (Deepak Unnikrishnan)

Insurrecto (Gina Apostol)

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (Anthony Marra)

Klara and the Sun (Kazuo Ishiguro)

The Mask Carver’s Son (Alyson Richman)

Pavilion of Women (Pearl S. Buck)

A Free Life (Ha Jin)

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (Stuart Turton)

[pinkbowjournal]

She stood on the terrace shaking the wet honeysuckle over her face, breathing its perfume, a creature momentarily compounded of dew and air and fragrance.

Elspeth Barker, O Caledonia.

[abellinthecupboard]

O Caledonia, by Elspeth Barker, is called a modern gothic novel, but there’s really nothing gothic about it. It says in the novel that the main character’s parents are Calvinists, modern-day puritans. They behave in the novel exactly as puritanical parents behave in real life. And the main character, Janet, is a textbook-perfect example of autism. The novel is perfectly realistic. I saw my own childhood in the novel in painful clarity. The only gothic element in the book is Janet’s murder at the end of the story, and everything thing else is so incredibly, painfully realistic that the murder took me by shock even though I knew it was coming, since the book begins with the aftermath of her murder. Except for the final twist, the book is the perfect example of a high-functioning autistic child born to over-religious parents, the way she’s never good enough for her parents despite being bright and excelling at school, all because she’s different from other kids. It’s been months and I still haven’t been able to stop thinking about this book. I feel like it should be compulsive reading, somehow.

Anyway, the book is also one of the most beautifully written novels on a technical level that I’ve ever read, the prose is so clear and precise and vivid, so I really recommend reading it

[everythingiread]

For a long time she had affected to despise what she thought of as the world of women, its preoccupations with clothes and spring weddings (and hey nonny no) and needlework and babies. While she still had no interest in any of these matters, there were other aspects which drew her, as a lighted window glimpsed in a house unknown can rouse in the passer-by a sense not only of obscure longing for other warmer lives but also of a sharp exclusion, harsh as a door slammed in the face.

O Caledonia, Elspeth Barker

[brucklethings]

“Auchnasaugh. Up the windswept road they went, through bare moorland where sheep rose suddenly from the heather and scudded off and only a few stunted rowan trees clung to the steep slope. The mist left cobwebs clinging moist and delicate on the heather, and strands of wool flickered about the thistles. If they looked back they could see the village, unfriendly with its low grey houses, one shop, the church, and the Thistle Inn, packed in a graceless huddle down the hill; beyond it the land rose again in barren pastures outlined by drystone walls, until pasture gave way to empty moors. But for Janet it was the view ahead which held all the enchantment she had ever yearned for; in the distance the hills lapped against each other to the far limits of the visible world; nearer the great forest climbed to meet the moor, ancient rust-trunked pine and delicate silver birch, swaying and tossing over grass so green and fine that only harebell and wood anemone could grow there without seeming crude, even blasphemous.”

— Elspeth Barker, O Caledonia

[keychaintabithascarlet]

She’s always been dead!!! She starts the story dead and you can’t save her!!! No matter how much you want to!!! And you will want to!!! She starts the story dead but that doesn’t matter because she was born dead!!! She’s never been real to anybody!!!

[myhikari21things]

Read of O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker (1991) (188pgs)

[virgin-martyr]

Divine pity. Human pity was not enough. A bleeding heart could only bleed and bleed.

Elspeth Barker, excerpt from O Caledonia

[the-end-of-art]

From O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker.

[wherekizzialives]

This Sparks Joy! Winter 22/23 edition

So, what has made me smile the smiliest of smiles since my last sparking joy post? TV wise I have two things to talk about: Leverage Redemption. Yes, I know I mentioned it last time but Season 2 is still appearing an episode a week and remains a weekly delight both for the quality of content of each episode and for the delayed gratification of not being able to binge watch the entire thing.…

[portersqbooks]

Jane (#1 Maggie O’Farrell fan) updated the Slack with two entries for O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker:

Moving from books Maggie O’Farrell has written to books Maggie O’Farrell has written the introduction for LOL

[one day later:]

Uh yeah…. anyone and everyone….. you have to read this book. I just finished it and now I’m gonna go stare into the void.

[louisegluckpdf]

Reading list pleaaaase

Or poems you’d recommend um…. Anything freakish or dealing w/ the mortal coil. October stuff ykwim. Romgerri aura

october books reading list

wuthering heights by emily brontë

literature and evil by georges bataille

erotism: death and sensuality by georges bataille

o caledonia by elspeth barker

the weird and the eerie by mark fisher

death by landscape by elvia wilk

carnality by lina wolff

lapvona by otessa moshfegh

october poetry reading list

the second hour of the night by frank bidart

october by louise glück

dear eros, by traci brimhall

sometimes a wild god by tom hirons

óda by attila jozsef

the dark cavalier by margaret widdemer

to one shortly to die by walt whitman