This week Hannah takes Stephanie into the Scottish highland’s with Elspeth Barker’s O Caledonia. Will Steph come willingly, or be dragged kicking and screaming? 

Janet lies dead on the floor of her family’s crumbling castle. But as Maggie O’Farrell writes in the introduction, this is “not a whodunit,” but an “account of Janet’s life, from birth to early death, taking in sibling bonds and betrayals, parental intolerance, the horrors and discomforts of adolescence, and the saving grace of books.” Join Stephanie and Hannah this week as the discuss Gothic literature, dark humor, purple prose, and the intriguing life of the woman behind this spare character study that is O Caledonia. 

Resources: 

Elspeth Barker’s obituary:  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/may/03/elspeth-barker-obituary 

Noir for the Anthropocene (an eco-critical look at O Caledonia)

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/noir-for-the-anthropocene-on-elspeth-barkers-o-caledonia/ 

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