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Review
“…A rare imaginative feat and the taste that it leaves is haunting.”
The Observer
Product Description
Winner of both the Guardian Award and the Carnegie Medal, this is an all-time classic, combining mystery, adventure, history and a complex set of human relationships.
It all begins with the scratching in the ceiling. From the moment Alison discovers the dinner service in the attic, with its curious pattern of floral owls, a chain of events is set in progress that is to effect everybody’s lives.
Relentlessly, Alison, her step-brother Roger and Welsh boy Gwyn are drawn into the replay of a tragic Welsh legend – a modern drama played out against a background of ancient jealousies. As the tension mounts, it becomes apparent that only by accepting and facing the situation can it be resolved.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
38 of 40 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
When I read this in my early teens, I don't think I even vaguely understood it, but somehow it clawed its way under my skin and stayed there. I returned to it, ahem, quite a few years later, to find it a fascinating portrait of taut family dynamics (children adjusting to 'new' family structures), unspoken rivalries and generally the horrible hormonal tensions of adolescent change. It wasn't about owls at all!
It's a stunning, sparsely written and fast-paced read, underscored with a creepy, scary atmosphere that could well put you off family holidays in Wales for ever.
46 of 49 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Some books go beyond being mere stories, tales with which to while away the hours, and become far more central within one's life. The Owl Service, which I first read at the age of about ten, is one such book for me. In my youth I was only concerned with the story of Alison, Gwyn and Roger and how the mythical past of a Welsh legend was reaching out to play itself out once again in the present day world, but with each successive reading, and there have been several, new meanings and layers of thought have revealed themselves. Around the age old tale of rivalries in love Garner has managed to weave comments on class (for example Gwyn's attempts to conform and lose his working-class Welsh roots, which he sees as a hinderance, are set against Roger's smug superiority, safe in his comfortable position as heir to the family firm); ambition (how far do we set our own parameters for what we can achieve, simply by settling for what is expected for us rather than holding out for what we really want) and the way the events of the real, everyday world run parallel with a much older world of imagination, myth and legend.
I probably discovered more about the possibilities of well-written fiction from this book than I did from any other. There are beautiful, haunting, descriptions such as Gwyn's nocturnal walk through the wood, spooked by phantom flames which he unconvincingly tries to reason away as marsh gas; there are moments of intense drama such as the attempt to escape from the valley during a torrential downpour and there are beautifully deft character descriptions: Gwyn's mother Nancy's fear and panic as she sees the past inevitably reaching out to the present for example, or the way Alison unknowingly plays the coquette. Above all perhaps it's the way Garner leaves the reader to work out the patterns and connections for themselves that impressed me. What you discover for yourself has a much greater dramatic impact than anything the author bluntly spoonfeeds into your mouth.
It's a clever, fabulous, wonderful book. Beautiful narrative drive, clever observations about themes which affect many children (being in a single-parent family for example and feeling that you don't quite belong, but being unsure whether that makes you special and clever or else something of a misfit) and haunting descriptive, subtle writing. It's glorious.
I probably discovered more about the possibilities of well-written fiction from this book than I did from any other. There are beautiful, haunting, descriptions such as Gwyn's nocturnal walk through the wood, spooked by phantom flames which he unconvincingly tries to reason away as marsh gas; there are moments of intense drama such as the attempt to escape from the valley during a torrential downpour and there are beautifully deft character descriptions: Gwyn's mother Nancy's fear and panic as she sees the past inevitably reaching out to the present for example, or the way Alison unknowingly plays the coquette. Above all perhaps it's the way Garner leaves the reader to work out the patterns and connections for themselves that impressed me. What you discover for yourself has a much greater dramatic impact than anything the author bluntly spoonfeeds into your mouth.
It's a clever, fabulous, wonderful book. Beautiful narrative drive, clever observations about themes which affect many children (being in a single-parent family for example and feeling that you don't quite belong, but being unsure whether that makes you special and clever or else something of a misfit) and haunting descriptive, subtle writing. It's glorious.
24 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Two English teenagers, Alison and Roger, have been brought to a quiet Welsh valley by Roger’s father Clive and Alison’s mother (who remains offstage throughout the novel and interestingly, becomes one of those characters of whom we can only draw a picture from the conversations of others) to stay for the summer in a house which once belonged to Alison’s Uncle Bertram.
The house is also home to the mad gardener Huw, the surly and possessive housekeeper Nancy and her ambitious son, Gwyn.
It’s an impressive novel originally intended for a juvenile readership but, as these things tend to do, ended up being just as popular with adults.
The style is fast-paced, sparse, and doesn’t patronise the reader with pages, or even paragraphs of scene-setting. The reader learns all they need to know from the action, the language and the conversations. The name of the valley is never mentioned, nor even the village, yet within a few pages we are able to find our feet and things immediately start getting weird.
Alison, ill in bed seemingly with stomach-ache, is plagued by scratching noises from the attic above. Gwyn, sent to investigate, discovers only a dinner-service with a complex floral design around the edge of each piece.
Alison discovers that when she traces the design and cuts it out, elements of it can be folded to produce the stylised body of an owl.
The paper owls disappear as she creates them, and with them, the design from beneath the glaze of the plates.
It transpires that an ancient power is still bound by the valley and an emotional and physical triangle is repeating itself down through the ages, finding candidates in each generation to re-enact an old drama in order to release the power stored in the valley.
Huw, Nancy and even long-dead Bertram have secrets of their own which are not fully revealed until the final chapter.
The structure is interesting, in that it is based on the interpersonal dynamics of two sets of triangles, the background triangle being that of Clive, Huw and Nancy whose differences seem irreconcilable, set across divides of class, sex and race, and the secrets Nancy refuses to divulge and which Huw is incapable of explaining lucidly.
No doubt this is why Alison’s mother is kept ‘off the page’ as she is involved in neither triangle and would upset the balance.
Some of the language seems a little archaic now, but I can’t help feeling that it gives the book a kind of period charm.
The house is also home to the mad gardener Huw, the surly and possessive housekeeper Nancy and her ambitious son, Gwyn.
It’s an impressive novel originally intended for a juvenile readership but, as these things tend to do, ended up being just as popular with adults.
The style is fast-paced, sparse, and doesn’t patronise the reader with pages, or even paragraphs of scene-setting. The reader learns all they need to know from the action, the language and the conversations. The name of the valley is never mentioned, nor even the village, yet within a few pages we are able to find our feet and things immediately start getting weird.
Alison, ill in bed seemingly with stomach-ache, is plagued by scratching noises from the attic above. Gwyn, sent to investigate, discovers only a dinner-service with a complex floral design around the edge of each piece.
Alison discovers that when she traces the design and cuts it out, elements of it can be folded to produce the stylised body of an owl.
The paper owls disappear as she creates them, and with them, the design from beneath the glaze of the plates.
It transpires that an ancient power is still bound by the valley and an emotional and physical triangle is repeating itself down through the ages, finding candidates in each generation to re-enact an old drama in order to release the power stored in the valley.
Huw, Nancy and even long-dead Bertram have secrets of their own which are not fully revealed until the final chapter.
The structure is interesting, in that it is based on the interpersonal dynamics of two sets of triangles, the background triangle being that of Clive, Huw and Nancy whose differences seem irreconcilable, set across divides of class, sex and race, and the secrets Nancy refuses to divulge and which Huw is incapable of explaining lucidly.
No doubt this is why Alison’s mother is kept ‘off the page’ as she is involved in neither triangle and would upset the balance.
Some of the language seems a little archaic now, but I can’t help feeling that it gives the book a kind of period charm.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Challenging but rewarding - a modern classic
I am a great admirer of Alan Garner's work, and share his fascination with certain themes - an almost obsessive sense of place, in which locations and geography assume lives of... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Joanne Sheppard
Crockery and feathers
Robert Powell has a wonderful voice, and he reads the most well known of Alan Garner's books because he so appreciated them himself. Read more
Published 15 months ago by G. Rose
The Best Book I have Ever Read!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you like a mystery then get onto AMAZON and buy the Owl Service. I was given the book for Christmas and as soon as I started to read it I could not stop. Read more
Published 16 months ago
First Class Service
It seems amazing that I have gone this far through life without ever reading any Alan Garner. I've been a lover of fantasy for a long time, yet this classic novel has only recently... Read more
Published 16 months ago by Quicksilver
The Owls were not what they seem long before Twin Peaks.....
I had of course seen the wonderful TV series, also scripted by Alan Garner, but I had never actually read the original book. Read more
Published 16 months ago by P. J. Dunn
The Owl Service by Alan Garner
I first read this book at school 'xx' years ago just as good and great to refresh the memory. Thanks for letting me be a kid again.
Published 20 months ago by Grey
Magical
This is taken from the story of the Goddess Blodeuwedd and written in such a way that it brings the story to life. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Paula Ward
Mystical, chilling and thought-provoking
This is certainly a book one needs to re-read for the depth of the story to sink in! On my first read through at 8 or 9 I was terrified by this book and didn't really enjoy it... Read more
Published on 10 April 2010 by R. Garside
A good read
I read this as a chid and did'nt fully understand it.It was good to read it again.
Published on 29 Aug 2009 by Mrs. E. Kempster
Haunting, scary and beautiful
Alison and Roger, newly-step-brother and -sister, are in Wales staying in an old house left to Alison by her father. Read more
Published on 15 Aug 2009 by Roman Clodia
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