O Caledonia

by Elspeth Barker

From Publishers Weekly
In this ebulliently imaginative cross beween bildungsroman and fable, Barker makes magic with both her language and her subject. Janet, the protagonist, is born in Edinburgh during WW II. Her inattentive, eccentric parents, after a course of alternately baiting and tolerating their daughter, finally leave her to her own devices--serious mischief, books and the isolation of a misunderstood intellectual adolescent--while they increase their fold by four more offspring. By then the family has moved to a sprawling old castle in the lonely north of Scotland called Auchnasaugh ("the field of sighing"). Darker intimations of mortality mix with childhood escapades as Barker's quick, urbane narration and high-flown, wicked humor convey as well the passions and pain of her protagonist. The fate awaiting Janet in the final pages, though clearly foretold in the preface, comes with a shock, as this entrancing first novel, winner of Britain's David Higham Prize, casts a spell that will make readers willingly forget what they know.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
This touching coming-of-age story takes as its heroine Janet, one of five children growing up after World War II in a gloomy, underheated castle in northern Scotland. As a headstrong, bookish young girl, she goes to comical lengths to rid herself of her irksome younger sisters--who, fortunately, come to no harm. Preferring animals to humans, Janet manages to alienate her family and, through an ungainly adolescence, remains aloof and friendless. Her mother's many schemes to cultivate Janet's femininity and to bring her out socially all meet with failure as the girl continues to favor birds over beaux. Barker, the wife of English poet George Barker, has written a poignant first novel whose quirky but appealing heroine meets an untimely fate.