A review by sarahmatthews
Chouette by Claire Oshetsky

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny medium-paced

Chouette by Claire Oshetsky

Virago Press

Nov 2021, 312 pp

Read as e-book

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This is a brilliantly surreal novel, a parable about motherhood that grabbed my attention from the start after a #reading slump.

The story is told from the perspective of Tiny, a professional cellist, who starts the book proclaiming she’s pregnant and her baby is an owl. Tiny’s voice is strong and draws you in quickly as she describes to Chouette how it feels to be her mum. The author is a parent of a nonconforming child and has said ‘to me, it was, like, closer to the truth to call this baby in the story an owl baby, closer to my experience. And I guess I think of owls as very solitary, independent.’

I found The writing effective when it merged into dreams at the birth, capturing that bewildering time.

Tiny has a strong bond to her child and will do whatever it takes to protect her when she arrives into the world; a world that’s not set up to understand her. The negative reaction of Tiny’s husband and extended family to how she looks and behaves is extreme. As Chouette grows older her father becomes determined to find a cure and sends her to specialists he’s researched. Tiny resists and their arguments become heated. The writing is particularly strong at these points, e.g. ‘To your father I’m a box that needs to be opened on his way to helping you and it doesn’t really matter to him if he finds the key to me or if he needs to smash me open with a hammer.” and after one row: ‘Once again your father has found just the right-sized drill bit to drill into my head and empty it of my convictions.’

I loved so much about this novel but I wasn’t keen on the ending. I read that there were several endings written and I’d prefer a different one!

Chouette is an original, funny and disturbing novel that comments on how society passes judgement on disabled people rather than makes space to include them.