![]() Like all the best fables, Chouette locates a current of human darkness pulsing just below its surface. ![]() 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. this remarkable debut novel surveys parenthood through the prism of a parable: here, its unthinking obligations are pushed to their limits. frighteningly elegant, darkly funny, horrifyingly tender. 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. Human and owl meet in equal measure on the page in a crescendo of stunning lines. ![]() In fiction, supernatural premises are notoriously hard to land, but Chouette’s final moments are among its loveliest. 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. 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. 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. ![]()
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