6/5/2023 0 Comments Chouette oshetskyTiny embraces what it means to mother an owl-baby, procuring fresh meat for Chouette and even allowing her to hunt and fly. Tiny’s husband insists on calling the baby Charlotte. Tiny names her daughter Chouette, a French word for owl. Observations at birth consistent with Strigiformes.” The delivery doctor observes, “Tufted head. When the baby arrives, she’s indeed an owl. Her husband begins sleeping in an apartment above the detached garage. Don’t listen.Īs her pregnancy progresses, Tiny’s body odor turns gamey, and the fetus wakes her at night. “Oh, honey, honey, honey,” my husband says. “You think this baby is going to be like you, but it’s not like you at all,” I say. Tiny warns her husband (whose name readers never learn) but he’s too swollen with pride to hear her: When the novel begins, Tiny is in a world of trouble Two weeks after a passionate night with her female owl-lover, Tiny is pregnant. Months later, the surreal landscapes and characters that populate Chouette (Ecco Press, November 2021) haunt my imagination.Ĭhouette unfolds through the eyes of Tiny, a professional cellist who has survived a traumatic childhood to marry into a “stable” middle-class life with her husband in Sacramento. When I learned that Claire Oshetsky had written a dark-fairytale of a debut novel about a woman who gives birth to an owl, I swooped in to pre-order. I adore all raptors, but owls are my favorite birds of prey.
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