Chouette by Claire Oshetsky

You're alone most of the time, bombarded by your undiluted thoughts and with nobody around to gently contradict you, your undiluted thoughts eventually spiral right out of control.
Chouette
Claire Oshetsky
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This quote is incredibly important to the understanding of Chouette.
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When I shared with some of my fellow readers that I was embarking on Chouette, I got lots of comments to the effect "that book was so weird!” And yes, it is weird, but I was immediately hooked because it was such a unique way to portray motherhood and what women go through during pregnancy, childbirth, and while raising children.
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One of the definitions of literary fiction states "Literary fiction as a whole wants to make sense of the world around us by exploring the human condition" -- Chouette is an attempt to make sense of motherhood in a very non-traditional format.
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Is Chouette a fable? Is it a fairytale? Magical realism? I don't really know - my English major days were long ago. In a nutshell, our main character, Tiny (lots of symbolism in that name) believes she has given birth to an owl who she names Chouette - thanks to my own daughter Sophie and her French background for clueing me into how symbolic that name is too! So yes - it's a bit bonkers. But in the hands of this author, I was totally engrossed because so much of what she is depicting is spot on. That women fear losing their identity after having a child, that women are patronized while pregnant, that a mother's love is FIERCE, that you need to trust your gut about your own child, that mothering is hard, and painful and yet oh so rewarding.
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As I read the end of this book in near tears, I was reminded of the section of Gibran's The Prophet "On Children" because the way Oshetsky ends Chouette felt like a nod to his poem revealing that "our children are not our children, they are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself, they come through you but not from you..." This is of course one of the hardest things for a mother to grasp as we watch our children fledge, but the way Oshetsky brought the story around was lovely. There are so very odd sections in the middle when I felt I was losing the thread, but it came back around and Julia Whelan’s narration was stellar.
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If you can just roll with the weirdness, I don't think there is a mother out there who won’t find a connection here. I was marking quotes left and right and the one I used cuts to the heart of the anxiety motherhood induces, no matter how old your children are. This is a book that definitely will lose some readers right out of the gate, but it’s an incredibly original way to illustrate a part of life many women will immediately connect with.