Notes from the Henhouse

January 1, 2024
A posthumous collection of writing from Scottish novelist Barker (1940-2022). In her obituary, the New York Times remembered Barker as "the author of a beloved if unsung" novel, O Caledonia, now considered to be "one of the best least-known novels of the twentieth century." In this more personal tribute, the author's estate presents some of her best nonfiction and fiction, featuring an introduction by her daughter, novelist Raffaela Barker. The essays were first published in a compendium of the elder Barker's nonfiction writing, Dog Days, while the stories appeared in an appendix at the end of a 2010 reissue of O Caledonia. The current volume comprises five sections, spanning the entirety of Barker's unconventional life: feral childhood caring for wild birds; adult years reveling in rural living while tending to chickens and the many children of her partner, poet George Barker; widowhood, when she learned compassion for the women left bereft of companionship after World War I; and contented later years spent with an American husband who "fetch[ed] bowls of snails for [the] degustation" of their family of ducks. The fifth and final section brings together short fiction that highlights what Raffaela describes as her mother's "love affair with words." These enjoyable, evocative stories--such as a tale about a nightingale trapped indoors that hurled itself repeatedly against a window trying to get out--often draw on personal experiences. Warm, witty, and insightful, this book reveals the rich inner world of an unassuming woman with a gift for transforming the mundane realities of her existence into narratives filled with magic and wonder. "Elspeth, the countrywoman, the shy Scottish linguist," writes Raffaela, "greatly enjoyed the after-parties with other writers at festivals, and post-book-launch drinking sessions, but always only as a contrast to her home life, in Norfolk, in nature with family and animals." A quiet delight.

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January 15, 2024
This spellbinding posthumous collection brings together autobiographical essays and six short stories by Barker (1940–2022; Dog Days), a journalist and fiction writer best known for the 1991 novel O Caledonia. The nonfiction pieces present an overview of Barker’s life, beginning with her recollections of raising a rescued jackdaw in the Scottish castle where she grew up. Tracing the course of her marriage with poet George Barker, she recounts falling in love with him while visiting his Italian cottage with a mutual friend and feeling devastated after George’s death in 1991 from emphysema (“When a lover, husband, or wife dies, the survivor has also lost his or her own self, the self that was refracted and reflected by the other, and all their shared and private past”). Other selections offer quiet accounts of life in the English countryside, as when she describes how a hen, who was ritually tormented by a rooster, started behaving like a rooster in self-defense. The stories—in which a woman unsuccessfully attempts to rescue a nightingale trapped in a church and a young girl accompanies her mother to visit family in Portugal—are brief and subtle. The personal reminiscences are the real attraction, showcasing Barker’s lyrical prose and frank introspection. Poignant and poetic, this enchants. Agent: Victoria Hobbs, A.M. Heath.