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A review by discordantnote
O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker
5.0
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!
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!