Joan Barfoot's 1978 novel 'Gaining Ground' finds improbable second life after rediscovery
The novel, about a woman who abandons her family for solitude, has been reissued and sold translation rights in 15 territories.
Joan Barfoot's novel Gaining Ground, first published in 1978, has been returned to print by Faber & Faber after decades as a cult classic. The British publisher's new edition has sold translation rights in 15 territories and attracted interest from film and television producers. The novel's resurrection began when a Faber employee found a copy in a second-hand bookshop in London. Rachel Darling, a marketeer at Faber, discovered the original UK edition on a dusty shelf in Peckham. She took it home, read it, and was captivated. The publisher then contacted Barfoot, who had not published a novel since 2009 and was effectively retired. Barfoot was astonished to learn Faber wanted to reissue the book, and as luck would have it, the rights to her novels had reverted to her.
After Faber announced the new edition, longtime fans "came out of the woodwork," according to Ella Griffiths, head of classics and heritage at Faber. They said they had read the book decades earlier and that it had changed their lives. Younger writers encountering it for the first time responded with equal fervour. The dust jacket now features praise from authors including Claire Kilroy, Sarah Moss, Max Porter, Samantha Harvey, and Doireann Ní Ghríofa. The novel, originally published in Canada in 1978 as Abra by McGraw-Hill Ryerson, tells the story of a woman named Abra who leaves her husband and two young children to live a self-sufficient life on a wooded acreage northwest of Toronto. For decades, it circulated largely by recommendation among devoted readers. The book appeared in Britain two years later under the title Gaining Ground.
Barfoot's narrative defies simple categorization. Abra does not leave her family with the intention of beginning another life or in pursuit of freedom, but under the pressure of an unexplained impulse. Her husband, Stephen, is a solicitous stockbroker who encourages her to follow her passions, but Abra spends her days smoking and reading the newspaper. The novel pushes past the question of whether a woman should leave to ask what becomes of a self when almost every relationship and responsibility has fallen away.
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Abra pares human contact to a minimum, not knowing her neighbours' names and going into town only for supplies. She learns to grow food, chop wood, and survive the winters. The story is less about escape than gravitation, with solitude presented as the destination rather than a passage. When her eighteen-year-old daughter, Katie, appears after nine years, Abra initially fails to recognize her and continues to refer to her as "this person" who "has no right."
Abra's observations of her daughter are detached and analytical. She notices there is more flesh on her body and face, recalling that Katie's bones used to be prominent and a hug could be painful. Now, she thinks, there would be no pain even though the bones of her face are more covered. Abra meets Katie's anguish with coldness, thinking her daughter has taken the abandonment personally when it was not personal at all. Katie responds with the patient caution of someone approaching an injured wild animal.
The literature of solitude is a crowded field, encompassing enforced isolation, chosen withdrawal, spiritual retreat, or social exile. Barfoot's novel inhabits different terrain than Margaret Atwood's Surfacing, published six years earlier, where solitude is a passage. In Gaining Ground, it is the destination. Despite its difficulties, everything about Abra's new life confirms to her the rightness of her decision.