2022/117: The Owl Service — Alan Garner [reread]

[tamaranth]

2022/117: The Owl Service — Alan Garner [reread]

“She wants to be flowers, but you make her owls. You must not complain, then, if she goes hunting.” [p. 102]

In which elements of the Mabinogion are repeated, or are still happening, in a Welsh valley: three teenagers reenact the old story without realising, and the abrupt ending keeps the reader guessing as to how this iteration of the story might conclude.

Reread, after reaching Treacle Walker: I last read this more than twenty years ago, and as usual I'm surprised by what I remembered (Gwyn stealing cigarettes for his mother, and carrying suitcases in the rain; the pattern disappearing from the plates) and what I'd forgotten (the motorbike; the dogs; the shadowy presence of Alison's mother). I had not registered all the sexual tension, either, and I wonder if I'm noticing it now because the world's changed and we're all more alert to signs of abuse and harassment: or because I have changed, and am more attuned to such things. (Clive, I think now, is a creep and possibly a predator.)

This is a claustrophobic novel about social class, about heritage and secrets, and about how younger generations repeat the trageies of their parents. And yes, it is also about myth, and about a woman brought into being solely to please a man, and her rebellion against that man. It's a deeply unsettling novel that I don't think I understood much of when I first read it in my early teens, and which I note Amazon thinks is for 9-11 year olds. I hope that some of the young readers encountering now will be able to look back on it (as I am) over a distance of decades, and find more in it than they had seen before.

Comments

[doubtingmichael]

I am very glad I did not try to read it at age 9-11. To be honest, I'm glad I didn't read it before I was in my twenties, but that's plausibly just me, not other people.

Despite the abrupt ending, I thought it was reasonably unambiguous in many ways. Gwyn refuses the role of the hero, but Roger steps in and, a little surprisingly, fixes the problem. It doesn't say what they all do after that, but that's because the story has ended, and they are free of it. But I am doing some interpolation, I admit.

Clive is a bad 'un for sure, and you may be right that he's a predator.

[tamaranth]

I agree that the *old* story has played out, ended: but there they all are (even horrible Clive and invisible Margaret) waking from the myth and trying to negotiate what has happened in terms of the modern, 'real' world.
I never thought of Clive as a predator before, but this time round I was quite unsettled by the way he talks to, and interacts with, Alison.

[anef]

The last time I read it was a few years ago, and I was just awed by the spare, resonant storytelling.

[tamaranth]

Yes: I felt he'd really grown into his own voice here, a lot more than Weirdstone ... and now of course I have an urge to reread Garner's work, and especially to read the later novels which I missed or bounced off (Strandloper, Thursbitch).

[anef]

I have read Strandloper, but not Thursbitch. Strandloper was some time ago now, but from memory there are 4 parts: The part before the hero goes to Australia, the part where he is on the boat, the part when he is in Australia (with native people) and the part where he comes back and Everything is Different. The two middle parts are both in different "languages". In case it helps, I found having read Patrick O'Brian of great assistance with the language on the boat, but I struggled with the Aboriginal language as it has not survived into the present day, after the tribe was massacred by white people. OK, probably British white people.

We went to the Blackden Trust to an Owl Service anniversary event and I was chatting to the author's wife, and mentioned that a glossary would have helped. She said that Garner had had a big argument with his publisher about it and refused to put one in. Thinking about it I can kind of get it - that as the language has died when the tribe was massacred we invaders aren't entitled to that sort of transparency.

I would really like to re-read Red shift now.