O Caledonia
I read O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker, and, well I think the main thing I need to say about this is that teenage protagonist Janet is maybe, probably, definitely, for sure an Enneagram 4 (but notch it waaaay up to 11 — or more).
“She had learnt to cope, even to survive, by deviousness, by reading, and as always, by day-dreaming.”
“She found an astronomical globe and took it to her room; she sat on the floor studying it and she wept. She did not know why she was weeping.”
“A bleeding heart could only bleed and bleed.”
Good grief. (Where my 4s at?)
O Caledonia — the title lifted from the Sir Walter Scott poem ‘O Caledonia! stern and wild’ — was first published in 1991 but has enjoyed a resurgence as well as a new introduction by the beloved Maggie O’Farrell. The blurb attributions read as a who’s who of British literary luminaries.
It’s a portrait of a moody and misunderstood teenager set in mid-20th-century Scotland (“Caledonia” is the Latin name for Scotland) and the ridiculous people surrounding her…by the way, that’s essentially everyone, including her family.
Take this as a Gothic version of The Catcher in the Rye or even O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait — a tale of a thoughtful teenager both jaded by and confounded by a world that comes off as harsh, silly, and nonsensical. Now, the novel does open with an image of Janet, dead and “oddly attired in her mother’s black lace evening dress,” so it’s not a happy tale by any means. {Just slipping that in there nonchalantly…} Yet O Caledonia is strangely funny due to its outlandishness. (Think: Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson.)
But why is it coming back into fashion now? I wonder if part of it is a desire for literature that showcases the tension between tragedy and comedy…you know, the way circumstances feel so desperate that you laugh inappropriately.
But also: Maybe it’s nice to be immersed in the world of someone who sees life for all its glory, heartache, humor, and mystery all at once instead of the one-dimensional and hurried opinions that seem to get the most airtime. (Just sayin’.)
originally published on instagram