Chouette

by Claire Oshetsky, Julia Whelan (Read by)

Overview

"Claire Oshetsky’s novel is a marvel: its language a joy, its imagination dizzying." —Rumaan Alam, New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World Behind

An exhilarating, provocative novel of motherhood in extremis

Tiny is pregnant. Her husband is delighted. “You think this baby is going to be like you, but it’s not like you at all,” she warns him. “This baby is an owl-baby.”

When Chouette is born small and broken-winged, Tiny works around the clock to meet her daughter’s needs. Left on her own to care for a child who seems more predatory bird than baby, Tiny vows to raise Chouette to be her authentic self. Even in those times when Chouette’s behaviors grow violent and strange, Tiny’s loving commitment to her daughter is unwavering. When she discovers that her husband is on an obsessive and increasingly dangerous quest to find a “cure” for their daughter, Tiny must decide whether Chouette should be raised to fit in or to be herself—and learn what it truly means to be a mother.

Arresting, darkly funny, and unsettling, Chouette is a brilliant exploration of ambition, sacrifice, perceptions of ability, and the ferocity of motherly love.

The Chouette audiobook features original music composed by Claire Oshetsky’s daughter, Patricia Taxxon.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798200746521
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/16/2021
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 6.70(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Claire Oshetsky is a novelist whose writing has appeared in Salon, Wired, and the New York Times. She lives with her family in California. Chouette draws on her own experiences of motherhood.

Julia Whelan is a screenwriter, lifelong actor, and award-winning audiobook narrator. She graduated with a degree in English and creative writing from Middlebury College and Oxford University. While she was in England, her flirtation with tea blossomed into a full-blown love affair, culminating in her eventual certification as a tea master. 

Editorial Reviews

Searing and ethereal…. [Chouette focuses] 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…. A harrowing and magnificent fable.” — New York Times Book Review

“Oshetsky’s book is surrealism at its best…. “Chouette,” which abounds with humor and lush imagery, forces parents to consider their relationship with their children…. The book has deep and universal resonance.” — San Francisco Chronicle

“Weirdly funny and bold, this novel will make you look at maternal sacrifice in a new way.” — Real Simple

“By turns poetic, gory, heartbreaking and strange…. An engrossing, surreal portrayal of motherhood.” — NPR

"It would not surprise me if Chouette finds a place in the feminist literary canon. It has lingered in my mind in a way that only the most original works do. In its exploration of difference – of disability, of queerness – it feels truly modern, but in its themes of love and sacrifice, it is the oldest tale in the world." — The Guardian

"[Chouette] has one of those charming covers that call out to you from the shelves of the bookstore. And luckily, in this case, the novel does not disappoint, transporting you into a world both imaginary and strikingly real." — Campus Circle

“Viscous, tender, baffling, and glorious, Chouette is an unforgettable fairy tale that glitters darkly with Oshetsky's raw and soaring brilliance. Part love letter, part lament, Chouette astonishes as each perfected sentence burrows deep into the maternal shadows of love, possession, selfhood, and sanity. A bone-deep, breathtaking wonder.”  — Rachel Yoder, author of Nightbitch

“Oshetsky's writing is virtuosic, laced with dry humor, and perfectly matched to the parable she unfolds…. A fever dream of a novel that will enchant fans of contemporary fabulism.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Chouette is deeply felt, linguistically gorgeous, and wonderfully disorienting up to its final breathless pages—a stunning meditation on motherhood and identity truly unlike anything I've ever read before.”  — Claire Lombardo, author of The Most Fun We Ever Had

“A Dantean journey through the violent fever dreams of a woman in the trials of pregnancy and early motherhood…. No reader who has cared for a tiny human being will fail to recognize the battleground this talented author has conjured.” — Publishers Weekly

“Claire Oshetsky’s novel is a marvel: its language a joy, its imagination dizzying. Every time I thought I had cracked Chouette's central metaphor—aha, it’s about motherhood! No, marriage! No, music!—the book flew out my grasp like a wary bird. It's a truly exhilarating read.” — Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind

“Written in perfectly balanced prose, Chouette does what the very best fantastical work does: it renders a vividly absurd picture which, as we look closer, depicts our reality more sharply than any realism could do. Exuberant, maddened, and sly, this book gives more straight-talk about the vagaries of motherhood than a dozen how-to manuals.” — Brian Evenson, author of Song For the Unraveling of the World

From the Publisher

Chouette is deeply felt, linguistically gorgeous, and wonderfully disorienting up to its final breathless pages—a stunning meditation on motherhood and identity truly unlike anything I've ever read before.” 

Claire Lombardo

Viscous, tender, baffling, and glorious, Chouette is an unforgettable fairy tale that glitters darkly with Oshetsky's raw and soaring brilliance. Part love letter, part lament, Chouette astonishes as each perfected sentence burrows deep into the maternal shadows of love, possession, selfhood, and sanity. A bone-deep, breathtaking wonder.” 

Rachel Yoder

By turns poetic, gory, heartbreaking and strange…. An engrossing, surreal portrayal of motherhood.

NPR

"It would not surprise me if Chouette finds a place in the feminist literary canon. It has lingered in my mind in a way that only the most original works do. In its exploration of difference – of disability, of queerness – it feels truly modern, but in its themes of love and sacrifice, it is the oldest tale in the world."

The Guardian

Searing and ethereal…. [Chouette focuses] 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…. A harrowing and magnificent fable.

New York Times Book Review

Weirdly funny and bold, this novel will make you look at maternal sacrifice in a new way.

Real Simple

Oshetsky’s book is surrealism at its best…. “Chouette,” which abounds with humor and lush imagery, forces parents to consider their relationship with their children…. The book has deep and universal resonance.

San Francisco Chronicle

"[Chouette] has one of those charming covers that call out to you from the shelves of the bookstore. And luckily, in this case, the novel does not disappoint, transporting you into a world both imaginary and strikingly real."

Campus Circle

Oshetsky’s book is surrealism at its best…. “Chouette,” which abounds with humor and lush imagery, forces parents to consider their relationship with their children…. The book has deep and universal resonance.

San Francisco Chronicle

Claire Oshetsky’s novel is a marvel: its language a joy, its imagination dizzying. Every time I thought I had cracked Chouette's central metaphor—aha, it’s about motherhood! No, marriage! No, music!—the book flew out my grasp like a wary bird. It's a truly exhilarating read.

Rumaan Alam

Written in perfectly balanced prose, Chouette does what the very best fantastical work does: it renders a vividly absurd picture which, as we look closer, depicts our reality more sharply than any realism could do. Exuberant, maddened, and sly, this book gives more straight-talk about the vagaries of motherhood than a dozen how-to manuals.

Brian Evenson

★ 2021-07-10
A mother's unconditional love for her unusual child—an "owl-baby"—drastically changes her life and her world.

"Each of us knows from experience that birthing any child is the start of a lifelong terrorization by the very child we love, and yet we mothers are able to bear it because we love our children more than we love our own lives, even as our children blithely seek to destroy us." Tiny draws this conclusion several months into her new life as the mother of Chouette, a baby she conceived not with her husband, who is "kind, strong, steady, normal, and a bit of a looker," but with her owl lover, who is "giant, musky, molting, monstrous, amoral, uncivilized and fickle." As it turns out, her husband is horrified by the baby—whom he insists on calling Charlotte—as is the medical establishment, including Doctor Canola, who pronounces terrible diagnoses, and Doctor Great, who offers deforming treatments. (Doctor Booze, however, doesn't see much of a problem.) Even before Chouette's birth, Tiny realizes she will have to give up her career as a cellist—though music still fills her head, and a playlist of all the pieces mentioned in the book is included in an appendix. She basically ends up renouncing human society altogether as she learns how to care for her unique child, involving a steady supply of mice and shrews, a nocturnal schedule, and a driving need to hunt, claw, and eviscerate. After her husband essentially abandons Tiny and Chouette—though he never abandons his frantic quest for a "cure"—Tiny's extreme loneliness is interrupted by a surprise visit from one of her sisters-in-law, and that is just one of many unexpected and sometimes frightening directions her life will now take. Oshetsky's writing is virtuosic, laced with dry humor, and perfectly matched to the parable she unfolds in this impressive debut. As Tiny puts it, "I prefer to speak in metaphor: That way no logic can trap me, and no rule can bind me, and no fact can limit me or decide for me what's possible."

A fever dream of a novel that will enchant fans of contemporary fabulism.

Kirkus Reviews