Tiny is pregnant. Her husband is delighted. "You think this baby is going to be like you, but it's not like you at all,” she warns him. "This baby is an owl-baby."
... searing and ethereal ... The fable’s metaphors leap organically from the page, contouring the dichotomy as capably as do Neel’s oils: a newborn’s vulnerability and destructive power; the mother’s isolation; her tender, feral nature ... While ambiguity in fables allows for interpretation, a vague idea of disability in a metaphorical construction runs the risk of reducing severe disability to animalistic comparison. Chouette seems to answer this by focusing squarely on Tiny’s fierce love as she battles her husband and nature to allow Chouette to be wild and exact, stakes that feel frightening and true to life ... In fiction, supernatural premises are notoriously hard to land, but Chouette’s final moments are among its loveliest. Human and owl meet in equal measure on the page in a crescendo of stunning lines. Just as Tiny longs for the world to meet her daughter where she is instead of forcing her into societal norms, Chouette is best met where it resides: as a harrowing and magnificent fable.
... frighteningly elegant, darkly funny, horrifyingly tender ... this remarkable debut novel surveys parenthood through the prism of a parable: here, its unthinking obligations are pushed to their limits ... Chouette’s magical-realist text mirrors that slippery ambiguity; often, it is hard to decipher Tiny’s descriptions of how something feels from how something is ... Like all the best fables, Chouette locates a current of human darkness pulsing just below its surface. Filtered through Tiny’s hallucinatory descriptions and vivid musicality, Chouette’s outbursts (and her, um, taste for blood) make for a synaesthetic reading experience – this is prose to sink into, more than buoyant enough to take a reader’s full weight ... Delivering a flagrant 'screw you' to some of society’s favourite lies – that motherhood is painless; that pain is somehow noble or clarifying; that healthfulness is the same as goodness – Oshetsky has produced a troubling triumph that is brave enough to leave its biggest questions unanswered.
... if you don't mind a little unexpected violence set in a surreal landscape, it will be right up your alley ... Oshetsky shows an exceptional talent for keeping the reader off balance. Is Tiny hallucinating? Is she in hell? Is this a metaphor? Is any of the story actually happening in the manner it's being told? The ambiguity is tantalizing, even mesmerizing, and if your internal gyroscope is sufficiently operative to keep you from slipping off the edge, Chouette will richly reward your attention.
