the owl service

I stayed up til nearly 3:00am reading Alan Garner's The Owl Service. And I want to rewrite the last page.

It's an incredible novel. It's so slim it's almost a novelette, and I'm convinced it's literary fiction disguised as children's fantasy. It gave me the creeps.

The best way I can think to describe it is as a cross between Susan Cooper's The Grey King and Ian McEwan's Atonement. Like The Grey King, it's set in a Welsh valley surrounded by hills holding ancient, mostly evil magic. The famous Welsh myths force themselves into contemporary reality (well, contemporary meaning between the 50s and 70s) and the characters have to fight and defeat the old magic.

And like Atonement, it feels menacing and fatalistic from the start. Plus, both are set in a secluded stately home in the high heat of summer. And Gwyn, in The Owl Service, is - to my mind - so similar to Robbie from Atonement. He's the son of the household's cleaning lady, he doesn't know who his father is, and he's in love with the daughter of the household. And both in both novels, much of the story is told from Gwyn or Robbie's stream of consciousness.