O CALEDONIA

In this, her first novel, Elspeth Barker evokes the unrelenting chill of Calvinism and the Scottish climate. It's a world of isolation and loneliness, where the young protagonist turns to increasingly to literature, nature, and her risqué Aunt Lila, who offer brief flashes of respite in an otherwise dank and foreboding life. People, birds and beasts move in a gleeful danse macabre through the lowering landscape in a tale that is as rich and atmospheric as it is witty and mordant.