Customer Reviews

The Owl Service

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This is one of the few works of fantasy, out of so much that I have read in 35 years, that stays with me and that impressed me more than ever when I just read it again, perhaps my fifth or sixth reading. Tired of rehashes? This book is fresh, challenging, brooding, and rewarding.

It is not essential that the reader know more of "Math Son of Mathonwy," from the Welsh mythic-legendary compendium THE MABINOGION, than is given in The Owl Service. However, older readers may want to look that up. The Charlotte Guest version is easily available online, and the version Alan Garner used, the Gwyn Jones version, is in print.

Reading Alan Garner is not a spectator sport. You have to participate quite energetically: be alert to pick up on all the clues. He doesn't do explaining. That's why some readers have been left feeling bewildered.

With that in mind, let me set the scene for The Owl Service, especially for American readers who don't have some of the background needed to pick up on the small hints he drops in the turn of a phrase. All this is established in the early chapters, but not spelt out.

The central figure is the young teenager Alison. Her father died and her mother remarried. Clive Bradley is a well-meaning but emotionally clueless man, though of course he is aware of the typical issues of stepfatherhood. He has his own son, Roger, about Alison's age. So they are an upper-middle class English family on holiday (vacation) in a house that Alison's mother (or strictly speaking, Alison) owns in a deep isolated valley in Wales and where they have a local Welsh woman, Nancy, who works for them as cook and housekeeper. Nancy has a son, Gwyn, about the same age as the others...and attracted to Alison. Then there is Huw Halfbacon who is - or appears to be - a slow-witted garden servant (why do all the villagers address him with a title of great respect?)

Now already you have three tensions established: first, the UK class thing of the householder and the servant, with differing levels of money, speech, and education. Nancy is conflicted about her "Welshness" and wants Gwyn to get out of it: she actually prefers to be in the English world, where she says "I know my place" lowly though that place is. Although she has sent Gwyn to the best local school, she doesn't like that they teach him Welsh language and history.

This leads to the next tension: the Welsh/English thing, with all its past memories of the Celtic resentment of the down-to-earth, practical, invading "English" who pushed the dreamy, poetic, magic-believing Celtic nations, with their Gaelic languages, to the western fringe of Britain, and from the 5th century onwards often treated them as tiresome eccentrics.

And finally, do I need to stress the tension of having two teenage boys and one girl. This is what brings to life the ancient curse of repetition that hangs over this remote Welsh valley, known and understood by the locals talking Welsh amongst each other in the shops: the ineluctable repetition of an ancient drama of magic, jealousy and murder.

OK. Now let's develop the characters a bit. Clive, the stepfather, is a "rough diamond." He's made a lot of money and has no patience with nuance. Wants money to resolve everything. His first wife left him - they don't talk about that, especially the son Roger. Alison's mother was criticized for remarrying so soon and possibly for money.

Nancy the cook grew up in the valley but left it following a tragedy and spent most of her life in the nearby town, Aberystwyth. Now she has returned, full of a sort of inverse snobbery and tremendous conflicts about the Welsh v. English thing. I won't go into detail on the revelations about her previous links with the house and indeed with Alison's mother Margaret, a shadowy background figure we never really see. [SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT - It turns out that Nancy's story was yet another previous re-enactment of the ancient cycle of doom...]

She is wedded to the old concepts of immutable class: the noble born and the humble are fine in their respective stations, but she despises the nouveau-riche like Clive Bradley.

Gwyn is a tremendously sympathetic character: mocked for his "country bumpkin" nature by the bigoted English, yet in fact full of ideals and dreams beyond them and in fact well-educated from the grammar school. Has a really, really bad relationship with his mother. Incidentally, again for American readers, Brits understand immediately why Nancy is "me Mam" and Alison's mother is "Mummy" and what that means in class terms.

Every time the centuries-old trapped elemental force of the unhappy Blodeuwedd, the woman made by the wizard out of flowers, finds a modern emotional situation that resembles the one of her ancient tragedy, it manifests itself through the girl of today. It can come either as a terrifying predatory presence that has the nature of a huge fierce owl, or many owls, and will go "hunting," or as a blessing of sweetness and light, with wildflower fragrances, representing the original nature of Blodeuwedd. You will have to see what happens in this wondrous book.

A few quick translations of things I suspect aren't American usage:
If someone is conning you with a tall tale, he's said to be "pulling your leg." If you suspect this, you can tell him "Pull the other one, it's got bells on" - (so more rewarding than this one.)
Packet of fags - cigarettes.
Petrol - gas
Torch - flashlight
Anorak - windbreaker
Ping-pong - table tennis
Snooker - table ball game like pool
The ab-dabs - feeling spooked
Pebble-dash - a rough stucco-type wall finish with tiny stones embedded in it
Flitch - a half-side of bacon. See the part where Huw Halfbacon explains his name.
Torch - flashlight
First floor - US second floor

The Owl Service is an amazing book. It can be read on a series of levels as it explores everyday life, social injustice as well as offering an insight into Welsh mythology. To top it all, it is a phenominally good read and very hard to put down. Garner, as always, researches his background material well and those familiar with his work will know he always relates his novels to some aspect of British folklore. This book still creates the same mental imagery for me that it did 15 years ago when I studied it at college. It deserves every one if its 5 stars.

I first read this book almost 30 years ago, when I was about 11 or 12, and, much like another good book I've reviewed here, Shadow Castle, Alan Garner's The Owl Service has stayed with me. It's an amazingly sophisticated read for youth fiction. It was this book that lead me to further explore ancient British mythology (check out Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood series of novels). The characters are sharply drawn and feel real, and the story itself is so intriguing. I highly recommend.

One thing that could never be said about "Owl Service" is that it is like every other fantasy book. Because it's not. Alan Garner skillfully weaves Welsh mythology with a suspenseful, almost horrifying story about ancient power reaching to the modern day.

Something is scratching through Alison's ceiling, when she is sick with a stomachache. She and the cook's son Gwyn venture up into the loft, and there find a heap of strangely patterned plates. At first glance, the pattern appears to be an abstract floral; upon closer examination, Alison finds that when she traces around the pattern on pieces of paper, that they form tiny paper owls. Alison's brother Roger is inclined to be dismissive, but Gwyn isn't so sure.

For some reason, discovery sends Gwyn's mother into a near-crazed frenzy, and attracts the attention of the old handyman, Huw. Huw tells Gwyn a tragic old story -- one that is connected to Alison's strange behavior. When their mothers forbid them to speak to one another, Huw reveals his true nature. To save Alison from repeating the cycle, Gwyn learns that he must discover things about his own past...

Like the previous two children's books by Alan Garner, this is about modern-day children swept up in mythical forces, but while the creatures and people of "Weirdstone" and "Moon" were solid and easily-defined, here everything is misted and ghostly. So much so that the climax, while exquisitely written, is very hard to decipher, and which will leave readers feeling deeply unsatisfied. Just what happened?

Garner takes a relatively obscure myth and spins up a strange tale around it. The writing matches that. Garner's is an exquisitely atmospheric style: the scenes of magic are otherworldly, as is any scene where Alison cuts out the owls, which becomes more sinister as the reason why becomes clear. There are a few scenes where the atmosphere is wholly human, such as the scene where Gwyn's mother leaves him win the rain without caring what happens to him.

Gwyn is our Charlie Brown hero -- he's the boy next door, an ordinary kid with an embittered mother. Alison's personality is a little less defined, since she spends the story being possessed by the magic. We don't get to see much of the real Alison. And it's not clear Roger is in the story, since he contributes nothing except a series of obnoxious comments and insinuations. Huw is clearly a mystery from the beginning, that is slowly unravelled to reveal his tragic ancestry and past.

While flawed by some useless characters, "The Owl Service" is a beautifully written book. If only Garner had thought up a climax to match the exquisite buildup.

It's a shame that Alan Garner is so little-known outside of his native England. A powerful writer and a master of the craft, The Owl Service easily counts as one of his best alongside The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and Elidor.

However, the book is not an easy read or a summer beach throwaway. The Owl Service is immersed in Welsh and English culture and folklore and the tale is told in the manner in which most English rivers flow: slow moving, yet with a strong and steady current that moves the observant boatman past wonders and mysteries.

The tale centers around three young teens: Alison and Roger are half siblings staying in the Welsh valley for the summer, and Gywn, the son of the housekeeper. In the first chapter, Alison and Gywn awaken a power that was created in the valley ages ago when a love triangle ended in tragedy. Now the power is in the children and they find themselves forced to reenact the tale again. Alongside other colorful characters such as Huw, the idiot groundskeeper who is far, far more than what he appears, and Nancy, Gywn's feisty, stubborn mother, the tale is a rewarding immersion into another world of mystery and magic and the power of the human heart.

Mabinogion myth meets the 'modern' day in this tale of recurring rivalry in a Welsh valley. Three young adults start out as friends until a curse of love and revenge from unknown eons ago descend upon them. Time and time again, century after century, one man kills the other for the affection of the woman. Will it be the same pattern for Alison, Roger and Gwyn?

I must admit to reading the Owl Service twice, as I could not fathom it the first time. Welsh legend combined with language from four decades ago left me frequently perplexed. Take the title, for one. I thought it was about owls delivering messages. My fellow philistines, it pertains to a complete dining set decorated with stylized floral owls. (With this tip, this review is already helpful!)

The atmosphere of the book is heavy, brooding, eerie and leads you to expect, like the Welsh villagers, that something is coming down from the mountains. Alan Garner weaves magic that you suddenly realize you are at the center of a storm. Let this story blow you away.

I decided to read this book after seeing it in a college syllabus and reading the reviews here. Since most people here either loved or hated it, I thought I'd add a more balanced review. First, I get it, mostly, and I'm not familiar with that parituclar Welsh myth. You do have to read it carefully to catch the subtext, and I agree that the Alison character, who should be the strongest, is the weakest. Blame it on the time when the book was written, when female characters were traditionally not well worked out.
On the plus side, the story is well-told, pulling the reader along in order to figure out what will happen. The language is also quite evocative, creating a mood much better than relating a narrative. The character of Gwyn is the best worked out, having more substance than either Alison or Roger, who are more superficial. Both Nancy and Huw show why Gwyn is pulled in two directions, the first rejecting what the valley stands for and the second binding him to it. In many ways his story was more interesting than the ancient legend brought to life.
However, there are a number of shortcomings of the book that I'm not willing to attribute to the obvious desire of the author to be ambiguous. First, there are a number of plot devices that are not resolved. What was the scratching in the attic? Why was Alison pulled in the beginning to owls instead of flowers (there was no struggle here at all, until the end)? Why was it the woman in the myth that was punished, when she was a minor player in the struggle? How did these three teenagers, who were not caught in a love triangle but rather a class struggle, come to embody the ancient themes? And why did the villagers seem to think that these events were a rarity, when the most recent enactment of them happened only a few decades ago?
Second, the ending was, I agree, deeply unsatisfying. After a whole portentious book, the whole thing was resolved in a paragraph, with seemingly no effort of will. How did Roger come to the conclusion that he did? Somehow it should have been harder, after detroying presumably countless lives since the original events, to end the cycle.
Still, it is a hauntingly written book, and memorable in that regard. I suppose it's a plus in the end that I wanted to know more!

I love Alan Garner's books. His amalgam of ancient myth and topical fantasy always fascinates me-- and this one the most of all.

Other reviewers have captured the plot line perfectly, so I'll not repeat that here. I would like to point out one aspect of the book that no one else seems to have noticed-- the symbolism.

Alison is a girl on the cusp of puberty. When a girl is that age, one always begins to wonder how she's going to turn out. Is the emerging surge toward independence and autonomy going to take over and turn her into something cruel and horrific, or will she grow beyond that to mature into something beautiful and wise, if still perhaps slightly scary. OR-- to put it in terms of this book's central question-- will she come out 'feathers or flowers'?

The hidden portrait in this book that forces itself on people, causing them to discover and notice it, is the perfect parallel to the emerging character of Alison. When the book begins she is still a little girl. By the end, she isn't. And the ending [which I won't give away] is symbolic of which way she'll go as an adult.

As to some of the reviews on this site written by young readers who fail to understand what the book is about, I can only say that here is further proof that learning to 'read' is no guarantee of literacy, sad to say. Kids who actually know how to understand what they read, including my own two, love this book and aren't put off at all by its unusual and enigmatic style. In this case, to paraphrase Marshall Macluhan, the mystery IS the message.

What an amazing book! It's scary, romantic, very very sad... I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves that sort of blurry line where history and legend meet, the supernatural and stuff like that. The characters are so well drawn one could believe they're real (I am quite in love with Gwyn) and this book really got me interested in Wales and Welsh history...also with Welsh/English relations. (I almost joined Plaid Cymru, but I didn't because it would be totally pointless seeing as how I'm Canadian) Uh, yeah, read this book! It will, as they say, sweep you off your feet!