Notes from the Henhouse: On Marrying a Poet, Raising Children and Chicken, and Writing

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. (Mar.)