“My name is Abra. My name is Abra. I had almost forgotten that; the naming of things lost its importance here, with no one to hear them named.” So begins Gaining Ground, the newly reissued novel by Canadian writer Joan Barfoot. Gaining Ground was initially published as Abra in Canada in 1978 and it is being reissued by Faber in the United Kingdom this month. When the book came out it …

When she was a little over seven years old, her mother, Mrs Roy, found a family who could take care of her when Mrs Roy was overwhelmed with running a one-of-a-kind school in Kottayam, in the southern state of Kerala, India. The chosen family lived in a big, airy house. The problem, however, was the “respected” senior who was the patriarch-grandfather.