On one level [The Owl Service] is a story of possession, in which accidents take on dual meanings and the Welsh landscape adds its own shut-in, brooding atmosphere. Alison's mother and Roger's father hope to consolidate their recent marriage and see their children making friends here in the valley. So quickly does the author establish these characters, particularly through subtly diversified class idiom, that you can see the stresses which will threaten the holiday hopes…. These stresse...

Around [the children in The Owl Service], growing out of the wild countryside, its heroic ancient legends and its recent grim past, is woven a fantasy as moving as any in the tradition of imaginative literature. For younger readers the plot is a sequence of curious happenings consequent upon the finding in the loft of dinner plates with an owl pattern. A mystery, an historical fable, the interacting of past and present and a grim, tragic element involving the relationship of parents and children evoke in ol...