“A sense of the spoken”: Language inThe Owl Service

Abstract

Alan Garner'sThe Owl Service has continued to attract critical attention since it won the Carnegie Medal in 1967.CLE is delighted to add to the debate with two pieces which complement each other, and which both consider the issue which has most divided critics: the resolution to the novel in which the seemingly less sympathetic Roger (rather than the Welsh boy, Gwyn) is enabled to ‘save’ the beroine, Alison. Readers may agree with our second contributor, Andrew Taylor, that the book needs to be re-explored.

Alan Garner's fourth novel,The Owl Service (1967), won both the Carnegie Medal and The Guardian Award. The story concerns the relationships of three adolescents in an enclosed Welsh valley. Alison and her step-brother Roger are English, staying in the farmhouse used by Alison's family as a holiday home for many years. Gwyn, who is Welsh, is the son of the cook, Nancy. The three are caught up in a reenactment of one of the tragic and violent legends from theMabinogion—as, it emerges, generations have been before them, often with fatal consequences. Some of the bruised participants in previous enactments of the legend are present as adults as this particular cycle of the frightening legend begins.

This article focuses on the varieties of language use which occur in the text, providing fresh insights into the crafting of the novel. Lockwood's study is of particular appropriateness at a time when the new National Curriculum in England and Wales requires students to develop “knowledge about language,” that is, to become more aware of how language works in a variety of texts.