The Owl Service by Alan Garner

[lorna]

Following my review of the Blodeuwedd anthology, I went on to read The Owl Service by Alan Garner. I was very impressed by this book, in which Gwydion, Blodeuwedd, Gronw and Lleu were presences in the landscape manifesting uncannily through the land and through the actions of the characters. Here the focus was on the effects of Gwydion's spell on place and people. Blodeuwedd remained a numinous being whose exact nature was not revealed. There were also undercurrents of class conflict and conflicts between the Welsh and English in the valleys too. Although it's not a factual book I'd highly recommend it as a modern fictional development of Blodeuwedd's mythos.

Has anyone else read it or seen the TV series (I haven't seen the latter)?

[Heron]

I read Alan Garner's first two books a long time ago when they came out in my teens: 'The Moon of Gomrath ' and 'The Weirdstone of Brisingamen' they were considered the ultimate cool teen fantasy fiction at the time. Then I waited for the third part of the trilogy, which never came ... or rather it eventually came just a few years ago: 'Boneland' , an intense continuation which is anything but teen fiction. Instead, at the time, he did other things, including 'The Owl Service' just about the time I was discovering its source via the Jones&Jones 'Mabinogion' , and later Evangeline Waltons' re-telling of the Welsh tales. In fact, fantasy novels, post-Tolkien, came in a flow from the late 1960s through the 70s including, of course, Rosemary Sutcliff's 'Sun Horse, Moon Horse' featuring EPONA , and many re-issues of previous material like Dunsany and William Morris - in cheap paperback editions - there was no Internet then! Garner was always alert to deeper resonances, especially as he moved on from a teen audience through 'The Owl Service' to 'Red Shift'. So reading all that stuff in many ways made me what I am today.