The Owl Service

The Owl Service is the 1967 young-adult low fantasy novel written by English author Alan Garner. Set in Wales during the 1970s, the story is adapted from the mythological Welsh woman Blodeuwedd, who appears in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi. Blodeuwedd is made of flowers by Math, the king of Gwynedd, and the tricky magician Gwydion, to be given to a man blighted to have a non-human wife. When Blodeuwedd cheats on her husband Lleu and asks her lover Gronw to kill him, she is turned into an owl as punishment. Garner reenacts the myth using three teenagers as the main characters. The Owl Service won the 1967 Carnegie Medal from the Library Association for best children’s book by a British author. The novel also won the second annual Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, making the novel one of only six to win both awards between 1966 and 2011.

Narrated in the third person perspective (personal), the story begins in Britain during the 1970s. Roger and Alison are step-siblings. Alison’s father is deceased, and her mother Margaret remarried to Clive, a businessman and ex-RAF soldier. Clive’s former wife was so unfaithful that she brought immense pain and embarrassment to Roger. Attempting to bond, the family decides to spend summer vacation in an isolated Welsh valley. Once there, they reside in a home once belonging to Alison’s father, which has been transferred to Alison to avert inheritance tax. Alison’s father inherited the house from his cousin Bertram, who died mysteriously around the time Alison was born. The house comes equipped with Huw Halfbacon (aka Huw the Flitch), who serves as gardener and handyman. A former cook named Nancy took a job in nearby Aberystwyth, but has been recruited back to the house to work alongside Huw. Nancy brings her son Gwyn, who has never been to the valley before but knows everything about it from his mother’s stories. Nancy does not tell Gwyn about Huw, who later is revealed to be his father.

Alison notices strange sounds coming from the attic and convinces Gwyn inspect it. Gwyn finds a tower of dinner plates decorated with a flowery pattern. When he picks up a plate, Gwyn nearly drops through the ceiling. Simultaneously, Roger, who relaxes near a flat stone by the river (called The Stone of Gronw), hears a loud scream and spots something hurling through the air. The stone has a perfect hole pierced through the bottom, which is said to come from Lleu throwing a spear through the stone (shield) and killing Gronw. Alison maps the patterns on the plates onto paper, folding the lines to create an origami owl. Nancy disapproves of Gronw’s presence in the attic, and tells Alison to give up the plate. The owl pattern disappears. Obsessed, Alison begins tracing owls onto each plate, one by one, but one by one, the owls disappear.



When the stucco walls of the house billiard room begin to crack, a visage of a woman made of flowers is revealed underneath. Gwyn wants to further his studies and uses gramophone records and elocution lessons to do so, which draws the ridicule of Roger. Alison, who vows to keep the spirit of her mother Margaret happy, acts kindly toward Gwyn during their long walks together. As tensions rise in the house, the holiday season is dampened. Nancy threatens to quit, but is constantly paid off by Clive to stay. She warns Gwyn to avoid the others and focus on his education. Nancy slowly voices her resentment of Alison and Margaret, as it was Nancy who was to marry Bertram years prior and become the house mistress.

Gwyn and Roger vie for Alison’s affection, but Alison would rather retain her life of privilege than court the impoverished Gwyn. She tells Gwyn as much. One night Gwyn follows Alison during one of her mysterious midnight strolls, where she finishes tracing her owl plates in the woods. Gwyn is attacked by licks of flames, which he dismisses as mere marsh gas. When Alison completes her final owl tracing, Gwyn escorts her back home, where Huw welcomes them with the phrase “she’s come.” Gwyn tries to flee the valley, but is slowed by inclement weather until he is pursued by a pack of sheepdogs. Gwyn steals Roger’s hiking gear and tries to escape from the other side of the valley, but is met by Huw, who explains the power dynamic in the valley. Huw tells Gwyn that those with blood ties must reenact the legend of Blodeuwedd every time, and that Blodeuwedd will come as owls instead of flowers. Huw is responsible for Bertram’s death, having impaired the motorcycle Bertram drove in the garden; unaware that he’d drive it near a dangerous cliff. Huw’s ancestors decorated the plates in an attempt to trap their magical creations, but Alison has unleashed them again.

Huw guides Gwyn to a crack in a tree, were items such as a spearhead are held. Huw’s entire lineage visits the tree, where they each take and leave one item. Gwyn extracts a carved stone, which he tells Huw to give to Alison, and leaves a cheap owl ornament.  Gwyn returns home with intentions to leave the valley after his mother permanently quits. Roger finds a stuffed owl in a locked room, which Bertram shot in the attempt to place the ghost of Blodeuwedd in the pantry along with reams of paper owl tracings. Roger also discovers the impaired motorcycle. Nancy storms in and demolishes the room, destroying the owl and swiping feathers out of the air. Huw gives Alison the stone, causing Alison to collapse. She is brought into the kitchen, where she wriggles in pain from an unseen force that claws her skin. Huw pleads for Gwyn to console Alison, but he feels so betrayed by Alison that he remains silent. A storm roils outside, slamming branches through the windows. The screeches of owls and eagles descend on the house, with feathers swirling everywhere and the traced owl patterns suddenly appearing on the ceiling and walls. Huw screams “it is always owls, over and over and over.” Roger refutes this, shouting that Blodeuwedd is flowers. When he repeats this to Alison, the room’s décor is suddenly changed from bird feathers to flower petals.