Ever read a book that stops you in your tracks? A book that takes a situation that millions of people all over the world are experiencing and looks at it through an entirely different lens. If fact through a lens so magical that it takes your breath away?
That’s exactly what happened when I read Chouette, beautifully crafted by Claire Oshetsky and released this week by Virago . A huge thank you goes to GraceVincent
for my gifted copy.
Chouette is the story of Tiny and her child Chouette. Chouette is not a typical child. According to her mother Chouette is an Owl Baby; a child beautiful, individual and complex, a child with her own very specific needs.
Tiny is tune with her daughter. She understands her needs, is prepared to shape family live to fit in with her child and feels no need to change her. Chouette’s father on the other hand longs for a normal child, refusing to accept her into the wider family until she has been ‘fixed’.
But fixing Chouette is a thankless and cruel task. The world into which she is born isn’t made for Owl Babies and the interventions and treatments her Father insists upon grow more extreme and cruel as time goes by.
This story is a unique parable about the joys and challenges of raising a child that does not conform to the norms of society. It is about the power of a mother’s love; love that will bend in every way to accommodate a child’s needs. But it is also about isolation; about the fear that builds when things go wrong repeatedly and the rest of the world turns away.
This is a lyrical and beautifully woven story charting the experiences of thousands of families raising children with complex needs. It is about the incredible highs and lows, the unbreakable bonds they forge, but also the fracturing of relationships that occurs everyday.
This novel shines a ghostly light on things we sometimes refuse to see. In parts tender, in parts brutal, it is a fable for all those unique and special families who we too often leave behind.
Rachel x
Book Bound 