1. Read the story of Blodeuwedd in the Fourth Branch of The Mabinogion (Garner used the G. Jones and T. Jones translation [1949], available from Everyman's Library). Point out additional details that found their way into Garner's novel.

2. Read the middle part of Sophocles's play Oedipus Rex, where the characters discuss the murder of the old King Laius. Do their conversations remind you of any in The Owl Service? Why and how? Does Sophocles's language (in translation) remind you of Garner's style? Explain.

3. Many fantasies end, "They lived happily ever after," but not The Owl Service. What questions about the characters remain unsettled? Do these uncertainties make the book more or less true to life?

4. Pick a paragraph from one of Garner's earlier or later books and compare it with a paragraph from The Owl Service in terms of sentence length, the...