Garner, Alan - The Owl Service - ( Item 139376 )
Published in London by Folio Society. 2013. First Thus. Fine Hardback. Sealed. No inscriptions or bookplates. Fine slipcase. Introduced by Susan Cooper. Illustrated by Darren Hopes. A unique opportunity to acquire a sealed copy of the book, along with a single sheet of two proof copies of illustrations by the artist Darren Hopes. The proof sheet is signed by the artist, printed on the same paper used for the book, and could be mounted and framed as required. Alan Garner's mesmerising mythical tale tells of three young children who awaken a deadly mythical power. Introduced by Susan Cooper.The Owl Service. 'A rare imaginative feast and the taste that it leaves is haunting'. Observer. This mesmerising novel won both the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children's Fiction prize. Inspired by a legend from the Mabinogion and set in a remote Welsh valley, it tells the story of three young people who awaken a deadly mythical power. When Alison discovers the owl service, a set of plates painted with an ambiguous, shape-shifting pattern, her curiosity soon grows into an obsession. The plates awaken Blodeuwedd, a woman made from flowers to be the wife of a young lord and transformed into an owl after betraying him. Though they do not know it – the extent to which the myth has already shaped their lives emerges only slowly – Alison, Roger and Gwyn have revived a terrible anguish that lies smouldering in the mountains and woods around them. Perhaps the most haunting aspect of the story is its merging of reality and myth – one that becomes all the more eerie when Garner explains the origins of the book in his introduction. The myth both fuels and feeds on real tensions and insecurities: Gwyn's vulnerable attachment to Alison; Roger's jealousy and derision; and Alison's growing isolation. Can they resist its malign influence or is another tragedy inevitable? Written in simple, powerful prose, this is at once a tale of magic and a subtle story about how patterns – rooted in the stories we tell and in the real and complex dynamics of class, and national and individual identities – play out over generations. Susan Cooper, a fellow traveller of mythical landscapes, has written a new preface for this edition. She writes that 'awareness of time past is the air that Alan Garner's imagination breathes'. Darren Hopes has created a series of beguiling illustrations. Production Details. The Owl Service book. New preface by Susan Cooper. Illustrated by Darren Hopes. Bound in cloth. 176 pages. Frontispiece and 7 colour illustrations. Book size: 9" x 6".
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