The Owl Service cover art

The Owl Service

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The Owl Service

By: Alan Garner
Narrated by: Wayne Forester
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £17.99

Buy Now for £17.99

Only £0.99 a month for the first 3 months. Pay £0.99 for the first 3 months, and £8.99/month thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Start my membership

About this listen

After hearing scratches in the attic, Alison discovers a dinner service covered in an intriguing floral owl pattern, and a series of events are set in motion that will change her life forever. Alison, her step-brother Roger, and Welsh boy Gwyn are forced into a cyclical replay of the tragic Welsh legend of Blodeuwedd, in which a woman is turned into an owl as a punishment for betraying her husband.

The Owl Service is a fabulous, multi-layered book of mystery and suspense, but also a contemporary musing on love, class structure and power.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2008 Naxos Audiobooks (P)2008 Naxos Audiobooks Action & Adventure Fantasy Fiction Growing Up Growing Up & Facts of Life Literature & Fiction Mysteries Mystery & Suspense Science Fiction & Fantasy Classics

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Weirdstone of Brisingamen cover art
Elidor cover art
Slayers: A Buffyverse Story cover art
Over Sea, Under Stone cover art
The Stones of Green Knowe cover art
The Coward's Tale cover art
The Mabinogion cover art
The Once and Future King cover art
The Call of the Wild cover art
The Captains and the Kings: A Novel cover art
Watership Down cover art
Under Milk Wood cover art
M.R. James: The Complete Ghost Stories Collection cover art
The Man in the Queue cover art
God's Own Country cover art
The Lost Rainforests of Britain cover art

Critic reviews

"Garner's remarkable writing is simple and straighforward without one wasted word. He lets the audience figure things out through action and dialogue. Characters are well defined. Experienced narrator Wayne Forester is superb. Not only does he take on the voices of disparate characters with practiced ease, he also manages it so seamlessly and immediately that it seems as though there must be two speakers." (SoundComentary.com)
All stars
Most relevant
The story doesn’t flow easily or make a huge amount of sense. Weaving myths into contemporary stories is a gift of the authors, but this one doesn’t hit the mark for me

Struggled to follow the flow

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Good story line, great characters and enough it mystery to keep you going. Very enjoyable.

A bit of magic and mystery.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is the second book by this author I have listened to and I have to say that if it had been the first, I probably wouldn't bother reading any more of his. An odd book, but one I had to finish. Definitely not in the same league as The Weird Stone of Brisingamen.

Different

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I first read this when I was 10 and it has stuck with me for fifty years. I have read it twice since but having it read to me, I came across parts I hadn't noticed before. The reasons is pretty faultless and differs only slightly from the way I have read passages from it to school kids over the years. The language is very suited to reading out loud as it has a musical quality. Themes of class, jealousy and folk memory build to a brilliant climax. Just listen to it. It's folk horror with a satisfactory ending.

The greatest folk horror story ever written

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is one of my all time favorite stories, it's beautiful and thrilling and scary and I love it.
This isn't the best version I've ever herd (that's the version read by Robert Powell) but it's servable and the story is still great.

If you don't know the story and fancy giving it a go, one word of warning the book doesn't hold your hand it has a non-liner style expects you to pay attention and fill in the blanks yourself. But it's totally worth it.

A Second Rate version of a First Rate Story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews