Reviews

O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker

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laschmidt's review

reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This isn't a review. I'm gushing. Look away it's about to get gross.

I love this book. I'm not ashamed to say I kissed a page. In moments of my own Janet themed gloom I whisper aloud a line of Elspeth's and forget in which world I reside.

"The empire of the winds is shared by the offspring of Eos the dawn and Astraeus the starry sky."

That's everything and nothing, compared to the rest. It's a practiced, anticipatory breath of preparation before the grand aria that inspires a standing ovation. Her writing is lyrical and ingenious. Her descriptions of nature are worshipful and I deeply understand that. As a lover and observer of nature, I understand how alienating and nonsensical it is that when you see a resplendent belted kingfisher heralding the thaw in a regal, perfected dive, the rest of the world barely hears the splash. Isn't that totally lacking, "in apprehension of the glories of the world"? Exactly, Elspeth. Too fucking right.

Our focus, Janet, is perfect in all of her flaws. She's better for them. She glowers, she's vindictive, weak, fearful, and subject to minor moments of mania and delusion. She's not a heroine I'd typically admire. In my throes of pathological perfectionism I tend to fall for the false Mary Sues before I learn their secret sobriquets. Janet is not a, "strong female protagonist" in the most vulgar sense. But, she is fiercely intelligent and incredibly courageous. She never abandons the most loathsomely sad and pitiable creatures or things. She looks them straight in the eye, contemplates their plight, feels it deeply, and carries them in her heart forever. I am happily ashamed to acknowledge that I am rarely so strong. At times, she's teased or hated or humiliated for being exactly who she is, but never becomes anyone else. Only, she learns to haphazardly navigate the active minefield of unerring individualism.

Sometimes, her morbidity and her cursed, doomed nature was so funny to me. Elspeth made it so. "My woe is their laughter." Sometimes it filled with me a deep sense of familiar melancholy. Elspeth also made it so. "Woe for me in my misery." In both ways, a rare and lovely sensation.

This book is at once morbidly horrifying and hilarious, a nature diary, a melodious love song to the art of language, and a ghastly account of an unforgivable crime. When I turned the last page, I was confronted with the enormity of the loss-- an unadulterated mind of a kind we desperately need in this world-- and I cried for Janet as I couldn't at the advent of her doomed tale.

I love this book!

cazxxx's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

4.0

aesalex's review against another edition

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3.75

This was an absolutely depressing read of a teenage girl who dies, and it was beautiful the entire time.

moth_dance's review

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5.0

Beloved new classic favorite.

Strange little Scottish girl Janet is wild, ravenous, shy, curious--complicated and beyond her time. If Shirley Manson and Kate Bush had a daughter, this would be that very girl. Janet is everything I felt growing up, and more. And the mystery of her premature death (not a spoiler; it opens the book) faded away nicely as the story evolved into more of a soft-goth kind of "girlhood/coming of age" tale.

But like why has this book been missing from my life?! Reading this (rather than yet another Dickens or something) in like 10th grade English class would've been the move. Wonderful writing and pacing. Perfect length for such a tale; any longer and the story would've verged on repetitive. Bonus points for this being Elspeth Barker's first and only published work at the age of 51! (Real aspiration for me right there.)