Customer Reviews
Genius - By: Squeaker, 12 Aug 2008 
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 realityin a modern dysfunctional family, myth & madness give it a Shakespearean power; yet it is deceptively simply writtenin elegant, modern, economic prose.
A must-have for any imaginative child's library, & any adult's too.
Follow Alan Garner into the magical world of Mabinogion myth. - By: Zoe Brillantes, 07 Jul 2008 Mabinogion myth meets the 'modern' dayin this tale of recurring rivalryin a Welsh valley. Three young adults start out as friends until a curse love & revenge from unknown eons ago of descend upon them. Time & 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 & 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 & 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.
Terrifying - By: Mrs. K. A. Wheatley, 23 Apr 2008 I have been reading & re-reading this book on & off since I was a child & 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, albeitin a compulsively readable kind of way.
Garner's books have been consistentlyin print for years, which says a lot about their popularity. It does however seem to be a quiet kind of popularity & I don't think they are treated with the respect & adulation they deserve. His works are always beautifully written, very well researched (he dealsin folklore & myth) & 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 everywherein their lives, &in their isolated country retreat things get very menacing, very quickly. Garner writes exceptionally well to create that creeping sense of intense isolation, fear & mounting dread that make this book work so well, & make the idea of being menaced by what is effectively a dinner service really work. Read this & then read all his other books. He also writes for adults as well, so you might want to check that out too.
Satisfyinginly spooky, and great on step family dynamics. - By: Four Violets, 02 Feb 2008 When Alan Garner read the Welsh legend about Lleu, whose wife Blodeuwedd was made for him out of flowers, the legend stuckin his mind for years. Blodeuwedd fallsin love with Gronw Pebyr, together they murder Lleu but he is brought back to life & 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 & her mother, Roger & his father, are stayingin Wales five weeks after the adults marry. The new step-brother & sister meet local Gwyn & a potentially tragic re-enactment of the legend is setin 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 & conciliatory Roger - all combine togetherin this smouldering book which grabs you right from the first sentence. If only the film, with its spot-on casting & faithful rendering of the book, could be shown again!
Haunting - By: Gregory S. Buzwell, 01 Jan 2007 Some books go beyond being mere stories, tales with which to while away the hours, & 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 & Roger & how the mythical past of a Welsh legend was reaching out to play itself out once againin the present day world, but with each successive reading, & there have been several, new meanings & layers of thought have revealed themselves. Around the age old tale of rivalriesin love Garner has managed to weave comments on class (for example Gwyn's attempts to conform & lose his working-class Welsh roots, which he sees as a hinderance, are set against Roger's smug superiority, safein 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) & the way the events of the real, everyday world run parallel with a much older world of imagination, myth & 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 & there are beautifully deft character descriptions: Gwyn's mother Nancy's fear & 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 & 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 (beingin a single-parent family for example & feeling that you don't quite belong, but being unsure whether that makes you special & clever or else something of a misfit) & haunting descriptive, subtle writing. It's glorious.
