The Owl Service by Alan Garner ~ 1967. This edition: Collins, 1998. Paperback. ISBN: 0-00-675401-5. 224 pages.
Alan Garner’s melding of Welsh myth and 1960s’ teen angst tale has, over the years, become something of a legend of its own.
Pondered over by literary folklore scholars and a wide range of students from its publication fifty years ago to today, analyzed to the nth degree, filmed in 1969 with immense popular success, this novel just goes on and on.
Here’s the set up.
Teenage English step-siblings Alison and Roger accompany their recently married parents to Alison’s dead father’s house in Wales. It’s technically Alison’s house now, for it was left to her in her father’s will, bypassing her mother to avoid death duties. Roger’s father is divorced from his first wife, who was blatantly unfaithful to her husband; this situation has left Roger with a serious chip on his shoulder.
On site are three Welsh employees: gardener Huw, housekeeper Nancy, and Nancy’s teenage son Gwyn, odd-job boy.
Huw is viewed by the English visitors as something of a half-wit; he tends to do a lot of standing around gazing into the distance, and is continually making strangely phrased pronouncements. (Big Hint: Huw is not the fool he seems. Or at least not in the conventional sense.)
Nancy seems normal enough, if a bit high-strung. She is very much wound up about class distinctions, and warns her son Gwyn about a.) fraternizing with lowly Huw, and b.) getting chummy with upper-class Roger and Alison.
Gwyn pays this no mind, being attracted to all three of the forbidden ones for vastly different reasons, though he is about to run afoul of Roger. (And Roger’s dad. And Alison’s mother. And his own mother. Well, pretty well everybody, really. Except for Huw. This is another Big Hint.)
Shortly after the newly blended family’s arrival at the Welsh country house Alison, in bed with a minor ailment, hears persistent scratching in the ceiling of her room. Gwyn investigates, going up into the attic through a hatch in the ceiling. There is evidence of rodent activity, but more intriguingly, Gwyn finds a complete set of elaborately decorated china dishes stacked in a corner. He brings a plate down with him to show Alison, and hey, presto! – we’re off.
The plate depicts an arrangement of flowers, but Alison immediately sees that the pattern also forms an owl, and she is mesmerized by it. She decides to trace the pattern onto paper, matching up body and head, and when done cuts the completed paper owl out. Over and over she does this, with some mysterious results: the paper owls disappear overnight, as does the pattern from the plate. Hmm…
Here’s the plate. For real. Seeing this pattern is what set folklorist Alan Garner off on the plot of this novel.
This is where Garner steps in with his retelling of the tragic Blodeuwedd story from the medieval Celtic folklore epic The Mabinogion. In this story, a man is cursed to never have a human wife. His wizard uncle then creates a maiden out of flowers for his nephew; the two wed, but the maiden falls in love with another man, and the two plot to murder the husband. This sets off another curse in which the flower maiden is turned into an owl, doomed to spend eternity replaying the story in each new generation. (Or something to that effect.)
So here we have Alison being possessed by the shade of Blodeuwedd, with Roger and Gwyn taking on the roles of her two lovers. Metaphorically speaking, that is. No actual lovemaking takes place, not on the page, anyway. And not really out of scene, either, from what hints Garner gives us. Though there is no doubt that everyone is thinking about it.
All. The. Time. Teenagers, raging hormones, the whole supernatural replaying of a tragic love triangle. Yeah, it’s a hot, hot summer, in more ways than one.
There’s a load of other stuff all going on concurrently. Alison’s confliction with her attraction to Gwyn (and maybe to Roger?) which her mother fears and forbids. (Interesting side note on the mother: she drives the story from the background; we never see her, though all of the characters refer to her and appear to view her as one who must not be upset or disappointed or crossed in any way.)
Roger’s father, though wealthy, is of a lower social status than his new wife, which is good for some malicious digs from here and there. Also, his divorced wife is notoriously promiscuous, going from man to man (or so rumour has it) with the result that son Roger is a prickly mass of resentment and fear that anyone will mention her to him.
Gwyn is feeling stuck between two worlds himself. Brought up by his mother, father unknown, he has managed to attain a scholarship to a prestigious school, and has flourished there and surpassed his own mother in social standing, which she bitterly resents, though she has wished this for him.
Roger and Gwyn bristle at each other, swapping insult for insult. In between times they go about together in relative harmony. Alison floats about, never committing to anything, tracing and cutting out her paper owls with increasing intensity, and giving by her very presence – all unawakened virginity – a generous dose of sexual tension to the scene.
As the summer goes on, the supernatural echoes from the awakened curse grow louder and louder until things come at last to a dramatic head. The climax is cut short by an unlikely saviour, in a much-too-simple way, and we are left at the end of this sketchy sort of tale wondering what the heck just happened, really.
An interesting novel, this. It really shouldn’t work, but for the most part it does. The ending is utterly inconclusive; the spell is laid much too easily; we know this can’t possibly be the final solution to Blodeuwedd’s reawakening.
Or is it?
This is a tough one to define a numerical rating for. As a novel, it’s hard to really get into, hard to find a conventional narrative thread; it’s all muddled up.
But on the other hand, one can’t quite look away. If you have the background knowlege of the Bloedeuwedd story, things click a lot more readily; later editions have all sorts of forewords and afterwords and author’s notes, but to read it cold (as it were) must have been a bit mind-bending when the book first came out.
Promoted as a “young adult” book, this one is indeed that. Older adults will find it intriguing, too. As might younger readers, though it might well induce a few nightmares. Those claws scratching in the ceiling, those clover flowers made of claws, those vanishing owls…
Brrr.
Okay, then.
7/10.
Leaves & Pages 
When I read this in the just-past-teen-angst stage of my life, I really didn’t get it. I of course didn’t know the Welsh mythology, so that didn’t help. Every once in a while I remember the novel and think: I need to read this as an adult to see if it was just my naïveté, or if it is in fact as confusing as I remember. Now I know I have to., Thank you. (Also: “Here’s the plate. For real.” TOO COOL!)
This is the third time I’ve read it in the last 10 years or so. I first read it when it was recommended to my teens by a librarian. It fell flat for all three of us. Several years later I was seduced by that cover and bought a copy, thinking, “Maybe it was just me…” Better the second time round, for sure, but still super confusing. This time round, I’m liking it more, but still seeing a bunch of flaws, novel-wise. Bit of a cop-out ending, too simple, too easy! But what a lot of things Garner has going on in here, in what is really a very spare, mostly-dialogue short novel.
I am really curious to read this as an adult, having acquired the Folio Society edition in a book trade. It didn’t do anything for me as a teen but i think my reaction may be quite different now.
Oh, I’ve seen the Folio edition! Gorgeous. Hopefully 2nd time reading is a better experience for you. If there is a foreword, read it. This one is definitely better with some background.
By the strangest coincidence, earlier today, I was thinking about the authors whose books I read as a child, and Alan Garner was one of the first that sprang to mind. I remember reading “The Owl Service” and finding it rather boring, at the time. Or maybe it was that I found the characters so irritating. Perhaps it’s time I went back and took another look.
No, you were right in your memory. It is rather boring, and the characters are universally irritating. What is interesting is that though Alan Garner could have done a lot more with this thing, it still kind of sticks with one. I certainly appreciated it more this time round.
I read this as a teen, probably in the early 1970’s, and found it confusing and disturbing. As I see here, the fact that my knowledge of Welsh legends was limited to the Lloyd Alexander re-imaging in the Pyradan stories obviously didn’t help, nor did the fact that I was a slow stater in the sexuality awareness game. But it made a lasting impression on me. Thanks for the reminder. Not sure if I will have the nerve to do a re-read.
Yes to both confusing and disturbing! You are not alone in this, at all. Knowing the backstory helps immensely, the tale of the Welsh flower maiden, and Garner basing his retelling on an actual china pattern. I don’t think he went far enough with it, quite frankly. It just sort of dissolves there at the end.
Well, unlike everyone else above, I never heard of this book. Or the author. And I’m afraid I’m not drawn to the story at all. :^) But I certainly find the image of the owl on the plate intriguing.
Yes, isn’t that an interesting image? But you’re not going to be missing all that much if you give this one a go-by. It’s very much a period piece of a rather odd time – very 1960s, it is – and it was an “aha!” moment for me when I discovered that the author was a folklorist. He’s twisted things in his narrative to make them jive with the legend, and it doesn’t quite work as it could. I found it really interesting to RE-read, because it fell very flat the first time I read it, and my teenage children, who I thought it would appeal to by the description, were utterly unmoved by it. But then it has this long history as a much studied and analyzed novel, so people are obviously getting a lot out of it in various ways. Or not. I’ve read some very dismissive assessments, too.
I don’t think I’d get to far with the book, since I can’t even see the owl on the plate!
Here, does this help? It’s in two pieces, head and body. http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/pattern.jpg
I once read its partly about female masturbation.Heroine gets very hot and bothered doing the tracing.
Sorry to be “coarse”.
Nothing explicit, but yes, I can see where that might be an interpretation. This book has been very much analyzed, often speculating on what the author does not directly address, but which he implies. There is a lot of unspoken but omnipresent sexual tension throughout. Is it pornographic in any way, though? Emphatically not.
I found a thesis online years ago but cant find it anymore.
It’s a very much analyzed book; rather boggles the mind how many things have been written about it! I always wonder what authors think when they come across some of the more complex examinations of their work -if they agree that the reader has found the deeper meaning, or are appalled by the misinterpretation, or if they just chuckle.
I read it when I was young, because I loved (and still love) The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath, which are utterly brilliant and much easier to read. I’ve always found The Owl Service disturbing, although it is a compelling read that remains in the memory. And I feel the same way about Red Shift.
I read Red Shift a long long time ago, and my only memory is that it was deeply strange. I think it was given away; don’t recall it still being in our collection. I do have a small paperback copy of The Weirdstone, though, which looked promising when I dipped into it recently. I kept it out; I may get to it sooner than later; after re-reading The Owl Service I am rather keen on Alan Garner and would like to find out more.
[…] that I pondered over a great deal as a young teenager – you can see the post and the plate here. Hmm, dare I re-read this book as an adult or would I find myself disappointed in The Owl […]
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The whole series is on you tube, broadcast 2969/1970, well worth a viewing.
I’ve just watched it again 52 yrs later.