As a journalist, Barker wrote features and reviews for
The Independent,
The Observer,
The Sunday Times, the
London Review of Books, the
Times Literary Supplement and
The Guardian. Barker's only novel,
O Caledonia, was published in 1991. It won four awards, including the
Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, given by the
Royal Society of Literature to the best regional novel published by an author from the United Kingdom. It was shortlisted for the
Whitbread Prize. Set in the 1950s, the novel traces the coming of age of a misfit teen, starting with her murder, and then tracing her life up to that point. Early coverage in the
London Review of Books noted that the "enjoyable squib of a novel gives us Janet's voice, sharp and satirical as the
Aberdeenshire winds, making its own weird and discomforting contribution to the portrayal of modern Scotland".
Kirkus Reviews commented on its “Brontëan intensity and Gothic nastiness” and “beautifully lyrical evocations of place and emotion.” "a modern Scottish classic", and praised for prose where "the language sings." A 2023 review in
The Economist noted that the heroine's "obstinate individuality is thrilling today, when teenagers' need to fit in seems ever more acute and their foibles are constantly displayed on social media." An eight-part adaptation of the novel was broadcast on
BBC Radio 4 in 2023. Barker edited
Loss, an anthology about bereavement, published in 1997. Her reviews and essays appeared in a 2012 collection,
Dog Days. Another collection,
Notes from the Henhouse: On Marrying a Poet, Raising Children and Chickens, and Writing, was published posthumously in 2024. ==Personal life and death==