5.03.2010
Book: The Owl Service
Author: Alan Garner
It is rare that a book proves to be as popular amongst successive generations as Alan Garner’s ‘The Owl Service’ - a contemporary interpretation of a medieval Welsh legend currently celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. The skilful capture of this supernatural, significant cornerstone of Celtic culture through an accessible, easy-reading story has given it recognition and acclamation amongst Welsh readers, with the same copies often passed between generations within the same family. Originally designed for children, it is revered by students and the elderly across Wales.
This story is based on an older eerie tale of Blodeuwedd, a legend originally recorded in the fourth volume of the Mabinogi, an eleven-part series of Welsh legends and historical narratives dating from 1000-1100 AD. Whilst the epic tragedy of Blodeuwedd incorporates a love triangle, murder and shape-shifting, Garner has reworked the tale into a more conceivable thriller through the frequent use of realistic dialogue, transporting the reader into a world where nothing is confirmed, the mind is stronger than the body, and a simple choice can have drastic consequences.
‘The Owl Service’ follows a naive, prudish teenager Alison and her snobbish, overbearing brother, Roger, as they seek to adjust to life together as new step-siblings whilst on a family honeymoon. Following a few poor choices made by both Alison and Roger, what starts as an innocuous narrative takes on sinister, eerie proportions as they find themselves stuck in a valley with no escape where mistakes from the past continue to repeat themselves and are lived out again with each new generation.
It is an incredibly tense story, fraught with a series of ordinary actions with terrifying results that powerfully engage the reader’s mind. Throughout the story, there is an intense exploration of both familiar and ancestral relationships, examining how people can easily escalate small domestic issues into colossal, outreaching physical, and occasionally violent, attacks, aided by the temporal and locational setting, particularly in a land where the passionate, all-encompassing Welsh spirit has ruled for millennia.
This novel analyses and questions several themes with a primary focus on how similar people can have different perceptions of the same reality. It highlights how, as society continues to become more business-orientated, scientific and fact-focussed, there is increasingly less cognitive space for passion, supernatural events and heart-centred actions. Yet when we are truly tested as humans in instances of great turmoil, upheaval and calamity, we find our spirits more resistant than our bodies and our spirits can soar more easily above the trappings of an organised life in an industrial society.
The poetic and complex history in the original legend has been competently retained and reworked through modernisation, refocusing of the characters and adaptation of the central themes to produce a phenomenal story that suits every generation at a primal level across a wide span of time. This is even more incredible considering that Garner is an Englishman whose other books are far less exciting and engaging than most modern fiction as he never writes the same storylines or actions that other authors usually choose. This is a story of epic proportions and is certainly worth a read.
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