(no subject)

[rymenhild]

I read a book today about some children on summer holiday in rural Wales. During this holiday, the children discover that they are linked, in ways hitherto unsuspected, to supernatural events recorded in medieval Welsh texts. They see some significant standing stones, meet a farmhand who knows far more than he should, and encounter or hear mention of symbolic ravens, harps, sheepdogs, foxes and owls.

I have never read this book before.

Did I mention that Alan Garner's The Owl Service was first published in 1967, a year before Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising?

In a way, The Owl Service is grimmer than the Dark is Rising Sequence. The darkness of the book comes from its lack of a moral center. Where Cooper's Simon Drew can say, "[W]ell, there's a good side and a bad, and those two are absolutely without question the good side," there is no good or bad anywhere in The Owl Service. Every character is human and severely flawed. The interaction between the modern humans' errors and the errors of Gwydion, Lleu, Gronw and Blodeuwedd in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi creates the tension of the plot. The class distinctions separating Gwyn, the cook's son who dreams of educating himself out of poverty, from Alison, an English future society lady who technically owns the house in Wales, and her stepbrother Roger, bourgeois son of a bourgeois father, help drive the narrative and create its underlying bitterness. While Garner tempts readers to favor Gwyn, the authentic Welshman, over the intruders Alison and Roger, Gwyn is no better than the other two, and his failures threaten Blodeuwedd's valley more seriously than anyone else's mistakes. In its unflinching portrayal of interlinked failures, The Owl Service is true to its source materials in the Mabinogi.

Comments

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Not yet. I was only informed I should read The Owl Service in the relatively recent past. (Well, a few months ago, but I forgot.) I look forward to the other books.

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

You must read them! I always think of one scene in Gomrath which shows the difference in what used to be seen as acceptable in kids' books from then to now (not a spoiler): one character gets to cast a spell, a long, detailed spell - that Garner cheerfully notes is real, taken from a magical manuscript; he left out one line lest his readers wanted to try it out and he didn't want any bad repercussions on them, should it actually work.

Would a children's author do that today - especially the statement that, yes, this was from a real magical tradition? I'm not sure. The HP wand+bad fake Latin seems the more usual route.

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

L. Frank Baum, of course, does almost the exact same thing in The Magic of Oz, in reference to the magic word the shape changers use. He gives a very similar note when the word is first used. I'd go get the quote, but that volume I believe now resides with my cousin in CA.

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

Fascinating! I haven't read many of the Oz books - only the first two, I think.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I have the vague sense that the motif of the magic word with a piece left out comes from Eastern folklore... I think I might possibly remember magic words with missing pieces in the Sephardi Jewish folktales I read when I was very young.

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

They're very, very worthwhile overall. I'd stay away from the ones written by anyone other than L.F. Baum- those are lousy. But the original books- are excellent, they were critical parts of my childhood, and convinced me that reading was one of the most wonderful things on the face of the planet.