Not only does the baby seem to direct her thoughts, behaviors, and speech, as well as render her body ripe with the smell of rotting meat, but at a rehearsal the baby “hijacks fingers” until she concedes and plays a piece the baby approves of.Īfter realizing that her career will need to be put on hold for some time-she can’t risk performing, plus her stench makes being in public a challenge-Tiny becomes totally consumed by caring for the owlet. A professional musician, Tiny is attuned to the fact that the creature gestating inside her can’t possibly be human.

From the very first line, we know we’re in an unreal reality, yet Tiny’s question to her unborn child-”How could such a thing come to pass between woman and owl?”-echoes with a sense of wonder and possibility. Right away, Oshetsky asks us to suspend our disbelief. Through her experience we see motherhood and associated notions of sacrifice, compassion, and belonging upended and redefined. For Tiny is not with child per se-not a human child, but rather an owlet, the offspring of an affair she has with a wild female owl in a dream. Equal parts magical realist and radical feminist, the novel follows the plight of Tiny, a woman whose journey through pregnancy and motherhood vies with the most dramatic of Hollywood depictions. It will grip you in its talons and never let go.If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, then Claire Oshetsky’s delightfully disturbing novel, Chouette, offers a nonplanetary paradigm through which to view the female experience: the bestial. Savage, startling, possessed of a biting humour and wild love, Chouette is a dark modern fable about mothering an unusual child.

In her fierce self-possession, her untameable will, she teaches Tiny to break free of expectations - no matter what it takes. As Tiny and her husband fight over what's right for their child, Chouette herself is growing. Tiny's husband wants to make her better: 'Don't you want our daughter to have a normal life?' But Tiny thinks Chouette is perfect the way she is. Chouette won't learn to walk she never speaks she lashes out when frightened and causes chaos in public. When Chouette is born, Tiny's husband and family are devastated by her condition and strange appearance. 'This baby will be an owl-baby.' Tiny's always been an outsider, and she knows her child will be different. * 'A marvel' Rumaan Alam * 'Frighteningly elegant' iNews * 'Harrowing and magnificent' New York Times * A FIERCE, DARK FABLE ABOUT MOTHERHOOD THAT WILL GRIP YOU IN ITS TALONS AND NEVER LET GO Tiny is pregnant.

Chouette novel