2024/147: O Caledonia — Elspeth Barker

2024/147: O Caledonia — Elspeth Barker

The billows washed into Janet’s face, the wind took her breath, she clung to the mane, elemental air and water, terror and ecstasy. She could die like this and never know the difference, horsed on the sightless couriers of the air. [loc. 1710]

O Caledonia opens with the murder of sixteen-year-old Janet, and then flashes back to her short, unhappy but vividly beautiful life. Janet is a misfit in her family: poorly parented, fonder of animals than of humans (who behave inexplicably and unpredictably), intelligent, romantic, solitary. She is an utterly charming and relatable protagonist, though I do sympathise (a little) with her parents. I saw myself in Janet who, given a pram to play with, repurposes it as a chariot for Dandelion, the family's apex predator: 'so long as in transit he could gnaw at a sparrow’s wing or other pungent trophy from his lair'. ( Read more... )