The Owl Service
The much-loved classic, finally in ebook.Winner of both the Guardian Award and the Carnegie Medal, this is an all-time classic, combining mystery, adventure, history and a complex set of human relationships.It all begins with the scratching in the ceiling. From the moment Alison discovers the dinner service in the attic, with its curious pattern of floral owls, a chain of events is set in progress that is to effect everybody’s lives.Relentlessly, Alison, her step-brother Roger and Welsh boy Gwyn are drawn into the replay of a tragic Welsh legend – a modern drama played out against a background of ancient jealousies. As the tension mounts, it becomes apparent that only by accepting and facing the situation can it be resolved.
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First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1967
This edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2017
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Text copyright © Alan Garner 1967
Introduction copyright © Philip Pullman 2017
Decorations from the original plates by Griselda Greaves
The author acknowledges with thanks the use of the following copyright material:
The Bread of Truth by R. S. Thomas (Rupert Hart-Davis);
The Mabinogion: translated by Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones (J. M. Dent & Sons); The Radio Times, The British Broadcasting Corporation
Cover design by studiohelen.co.uk
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007127894
Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780007539055
Version: 2019-09-20
“Garner writes books that really matter, books driven by powerful forces within himself, our history, our language, our mythology, our world.”
David Almond
“Alan Garner is indisputably the great originator, the most important British writer of fantasy since Tolkien, and in many respects better than Tolkien, because deeper and more truthful. His work is where human emotion and mythic resonance, sexuality and geology, modernity and memory and craftsmanship meet and cross-fertilise. Any country except Britain would have long ago recognised his importance, and celebrated it with postage stamps and statues and street-names. But that’s the way with us: our greatest prophets go unnoticed by the politicians and the owners of media empires. I salute him with the most heartfelt respect and admiration.”
Philip Pullman
“Alan Garner’s fiction is something special. Garner’s fantasies were smart and challenging, based in the here and the now, in which real English places emerged from the shadows of folklore, and in which people found themselves walking, living and battling their way through the dreams and patterns of myth.”
Neil Gaiman
“The power and range of Alan Garner’s astounding talent has grown with every book he’s written.”
Susan Cooper
“Remarkable … a rare imaginative feat, and the taste it leaves is haunting.”
Observer
“In his earlier novels, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, The Moon of Gomrath and Elidor, Garner used the successful formula of the spilling of the twilight world of ancient legend into the present day. Here he uses the formula again, with an added depth, and even more compulsive terror-haunted beauty.”
Financial Times
For Cinna
—The owls are restless.
People have died here,
Good men for bad reasons,
Better forgotten.—
R. S. Thomas
I will build my love a tower
By the clear crystal fountain,
And on it I will build
All the flowers of the mountain.
Traditional
Possessive parents rarely live long enough
to see the fruits of their selfishness.
Radio Times (15.9.65)
Contents
I am indebted to Betty Greaves, who saw the pattern; to Professor Gwyn Jones and Professor Thomas Jones, for permission to use copyright material in the text; and to Dafydd Rees Cilwern, for his patience.
A. G
When this book was first published, in 1967, I was an undergraduate at Oxford reading English, and I remember the sensation it caused – not among the academics, for whom children’s literature was an area of no interest whatsoever, but among those of us who had arrived at university with our heads already harbouring an unhealthy fascination with hobbits and elves and so on. Tolkien was all the rage, but we weren’t allowed to take an academic interest in that sort of thing because fantasy was as un-literary, as looked down on, as an enthusiasm for books that children read. The fantasy fans had already read and enjoyed the three earlier books by Alan Garner, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960), The Moon of Gomrath
