Chouette is a dark modern fable about mothering an unusual child who doesn't act or look like the others. An "owl-baby" as her mother Tiny calls her. Cover quotes call it hypnotic, raw, gorgeous and disorientating, and it is. Tiny dreams of her owl-lover, and then the next morning finds herself pregnant, and she knows it’s an owl-baby, not that anyone really believes her. But then Chouette is born, and she is the owl-baby Tiny knew her to be, and no one else seems to understand her. This was a strange, at times horrifying little book about motherhood and maternal love, difference and disability, queerness, filled with visceral gut splitting prose. I completely loved it. It’s so absolutely full of love too — Tiny loves her owl-baby, her owl-lover, her secret friend and even her husband, she is a person(?) with a lot of emotions and a compelling voice that stuck with me There’s definitely a thread running through of parenting a different child in a world not set up for them, and while I don’t think the owl-ness is specifically an allegory for disability, much of the way others react to Chouette and Tiny is— the horror and fear of the other, the pressure to conform. I always fold up pages at the bottom to save lines and the one I did for this book is someone saying to Tiny “we don’t want to alarm you but we think you should be terrified” which feels like the epitome of how others react to difference for future readers, there’s also a list of songs mentioned in the back of the book in case you want to experience it sonically along with the prose — I loved it anyway but I wish I’d done this too!

I loved this book from the first page. It’s obviously an allegory about parenthood, and the process of parenting a baby/child who is different. The characters are at times a little polarised but not unbelievably so. The authors turn of phrase is just breathtaking and I found myself stopping and rereading parts just because the language and what it conveyed was so amazing. Anyone who recognises the light and dark of becoming a parent may enjoy this.

"My life becomes a row of tiny memory-pearls, strung along a limpid string. Typically, you sleep until noon. When you’re awake, I change your diaper and feed you a meal of chopped pinkie mice mixed with raw egg. After breakfast you burp up a neat pellet like clockwork. And then, in the afternoon, we’ll play music together. I’ve decided to call the sounds we make together “music.” I play my cello, and you run and peck at your little marimba. I’m never sure whether the sounds you make are intentional or whether they are accidental improvisations—a kind of found art. Either way, my days have become tolerable. It’s true that if I try to play any music on my own— music I might want to play, independent of your wishes— then you’ll fly at me and peck at my fingers and slash at the fingerboard. .... I’ve learned it’s best to follow your lead and to adapt to your tunings." A novel which I think will appeal to fans of Rachel Yoder's “Night Bitch” a book I think it resembles with its intense, visceral exploration of motherhood via the medium both of animal-transformation and with a very deliberate “tightrope” walk of the fantastic between whether the book’s central premise is parable, fantast, metaphor or reality. The book opens with the narrator (Tiny – a concert cellist) recounting a vivid dream of making love with a female owl – finding out two weeks later that she is pregnant. Her all-American patent-lawyer husband (one of a family of six wholesome brothers with wholesome and conventional “dog-baby” children – one of the wives “the secret abortionist” being the only real outsider other than Tiny) is delighted – but Tiny immediately insists that the baby will be an owl-baby – his attitude to that running the range of pity to embarrassment to anger at his wife bringing up past issues and projecting them on to their baby. But when the baby is born, after a interim trip to Berlin which I have to say did not quite resonate with me, the Doctor’s immediate diagnosis is that the observations at birth (Tufted head, Yellow Eyes, Chitinous scaling) are “consistent with Strigiformes” Tiny names her owl-baby Chouette and fiercely resists conventional developmental milestones, standard baby raring and medical intervention – instead letting herself be led by instinct and by Chouette’s developing needs. Her husband – furious at her refusal to give the baby he calls Charlotte a chance at a normal life - takes the opposite view ("But here’s the crux of it, owl-baby. Your father wants to fix you, and I want us to love you as you are"): seeking help and assistance from schools and doctors. Tiny’s only real ally is her sister-in-law who briefly becomes her lover before being herself unable to accept the reality of Chouette. From their we have a story of motherhood and I think particularly how as a mother one navigates and breaks free of societal expectations and pre-formed moulds to allow one’s children to grow and develop into their own identities with all the sacrifice of one’s own expectations and pre-conceptions that involves as well as the pain of allowing them to eventually break free of parental influence as well as societal. This is not a book that will I think appeal to everyone – those looking for a conventional narrative may struggle and for all its celebration of avian life I think some readers will find the deaths of various animals (mainly pets) triggering. None of this applied to me – although I will confess that, perhaps appropriately given my avatar, I did realise that my own sympathies and even parenting styles were much closer to that of the parents of dog-babies. I was also initially slightly uncomfortable at the scenes set in a church (although these were treated more sympathetically than I feared). I did find that the copious and clearly deeply understood musical references (which are then compiled in an afterword) were almost entirely wasted on me. But ultimately of course great literature is often about exploring differences and gaining an empathetic understanding of ideas, views and experiences different to one’s own - and this very striking novel does this brilliantly.

Chouette is a weird and darkly compelling book about motherhood and caring for a child who doesn’t fit into society’s norms. I found myself trying hard to work out what was “really” going on, but soon gave up that impossible task and relaxed into the strange other-owl-world of the novel. A novel of fierce love, music, exhaustion and understanding between a mother and daughter. Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

Tiny is a cellist living in Sacramento with her husband. On the night she and her husband have sex, she is also visited by her owl lover. She conceives but thinks her owl baby is from her owl lover rather than her husband. So there’s that! And I’m really not sure how to ‘take’ this book except that I know that I loved it. Is Chouette (French for owl) really an owl baby? Or has she been born with some syndrome? Tiny refers to her as an owl baby throughout and describes Chouettes actions and behaviour as more bird-like than childlike. But her husband and his family are afraid of Chouette. They call her Charlotte instead and pity her as a broken child. Her husband was even waiting for Chouette to die at first. Once I stopped myself from fixating on what was true and what was fantasy in the book, I just simply enjoyed it for a brilliantly, beautifully written book and accepted it for what it was. Which may just be the point of this book - the acceptance of a ‘different’ child for who they are.