Great
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This was a bizarre little book. It is a retelling of an old Welsh legend - a legend of a curse that is relived in each generation, again and again, in the same Welsh Valley. The main characters are Allison and Roger who are Step Siblings and Gwen is the son of the flitch - the wise man of the valley.
The book captivated and I could not put it down. Various kinds of discrimination and prejudice pervade the plot and the book is full of dark twisty turns in the plot and sub-plots, one of which is the condensation of the English to the Welsh and its corollary in the Welsh resentment of English wealth. The class divide is on many different levels: between a working class boy and richer children, between a land-owning family and a businessman's family and finally there is the divide between urban Welsh and the Welsh-speaking country people. It was a fantastic book and as I stated earlier I could not put it down.
(First written as Journal Reading Notes in 1999.)
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Genius
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This is without doubt one of the best novels for children ever written - yet I hesitate to call it a children's story - so much depth & complexity it contains. It knocks JK Rowling, CS Lewis to the floor.
I first read it when I was 11 & it frightened me so much I couldn't finish it. Re-reading it as an adult, I don't know if I could have fully have understood it as a child.
Its blend of everyday reality in a modern dysfunctional family, myth and madness give it a Shakespearean power; yet it is deceptively simply written in elegant, modern, economic prose.
A must-have for any imaginative child's library, and any adult's too.
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Follow Alan Garner into the magical world of Mabinogion myth.
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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 love and revenge from unknown eons ago of 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.
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Terrifying
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I have been reading and re-reading this book on and off since I was a child and I am now a middle aged woman with three children of my own. Despite you thinking I might know better by now, I still find this book absolutely terrifying, albeit in a compulsively readable kind of way.
Garner's books have been consistently in print for years, which says a lot about their popularity. It does however seem to be a quiet kind of popularity and I don't think they are treated with the respect and adulation they deserve. His works are always beautifully written, very well researched (he deals in folklore and myth) and have a tense, haunting quality that will scare your socks off.
This story settles around the discovery of a set of plates which are decorated with ornate owl faces. The family who discover them soon find that owls are cropping up everywhere in their lives, and in their isolated country retreat things get very menacing, very quickly. Garner writes exceptionally well to create that creeping sense of intense isolation, fear and mounting dread that make this book work so well, and make the idea of being menaced by what is effectively a dinner service really work. Read this and then read all his other books. He also writes for adults as well, so you might want to check that out too.
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Satisfyinginly spooky, and great on step family dynamics.
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When Alan Garner read the Welsh legend about Lleu, whose wife Blodeuwedd was made for him out of flowers, the legend stuck in his mind for years. Blodeuwedd falls in love with Gronw Pebyr, together they murder Lleu but he is brought back to life and kills Gronw by throwing a spear at him right through a rock. Blodeuwedd is turned into an owl.
Garner translates the legend into a modern tale. Alison and her mother, Roger and his father, are staying in Wales five weeks after the adults marry. The new step-brother and sister meet local Gwyn and a potentially tragic re-enactment of the legend is set in motion when Alison becomes obsessed with a set of plates from the loft, with a design on them which looks like an owl - or is it a flower pattern? The claustrophobic atmosphere of the brooding Welsh valley, the resentful Gwyn, his mother who is hiding so much from him, sulky Alison and conciliatory Roger - all combine together in this smouldering book which grabs you right from the first sentence. If only the film, with its spot-on casting and faithful rendering of the book, could be shown again!
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