Notes from the Henhouse
On Marrying a Poet, Raising Children and Chickens, and Writing
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A sharp and witty collection of autobiographical essays by the late Elspeth Barker—acclaimed journalist and author of the beloved modern classic O Caledonia.
Following the publication of her acclaimed, darkly funny novel O Caledonia, Elspeth Barker’s sharp and witty essays appeared regularly in the national press. Notes from the Henhouse, a selection of the most personal of these pieces, welcomes readers into the celebrated writer’s life.
Tracing Barker’s upbringing from her Scottish roots, these essays beautifully capture her time with the poet George Barker and her profound sense of loss following his death. She writes about George’s former lover Elizabeth Smart and other figures from 1950s bohemia and 1960s counterculture. Pieces like “Thoughts in a Garden,” equal parts hilarious and moving, read like dispatches from the front lines of country living, depicting the vagaries of raising a large family and assorted pets in a damp and drafty farmhouse.
Vivid, charming, and wholly original, Notes from the Henhouse is a wonderful glimpse into the life of an extraordinary writer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
