I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven

A journey of self discovery, October 26, 2003

The book is written in a simple style - easy to read and understand. However, there is a lot of power in this unassuming book and the more you read it the more you get out of it.

Keep tissues handy - you'll need them!

Could have been better., May 12, 2000

While this book purports to be about Native Americans, don't be deceived. It is more about the priest who is assigned to live with them. Everything we learn about the Native Americans is shown to us through the the priest's eyes.

The book's ending stretches the reader's patience. Throughout the book, the priest lives a vigorous, physical life. He does this in spite of a diagnosis made at the beginning of the book that he has a terminal disease and will die within three years. Of course, this diagnosis is kept secret from the priest. He'll be the last to know. Only at the end of the story does the priest's mysterious disease take its toll. His health suddenly declines, and the people of the village ask him to stay and live his final days with them. The reader is left to wonder how this priest could not have known that his health was in jeapordy. Probably, it was because he felt fine throughout most of his stay in Kingcome (the village's name).

I Heard The Owl Call My Name, March 29, 2002

The story is one that is very true to the world today - it talks about a culture that is slowly being lost to technology. It is a very touching story, about love, loss, friendship, trust....in fact it is about every conceivable human emotion. It is told in a beautiful way, that iss incredibly realistic, and transports you to its setting. The myths and stories that are described are very insightful of the tribal culture. The stories were believed whole-heartedly, even though they may seem childish and unbelievable. But it is that childish innocence that allowed these tribes to thrive and live in a peaceful way. The dimension that the vicar from the outside world brings is interesting in the sense that although he symbolises the technology that is overshadowing the tribal culture, he is the one who is trying his best to maintain it. It shows how a simple life can silence the want for a more luxurious one.

All in all, this book is extremely good, and I recommend it as a very interesting read. The author has managed to show a culture that is dying out, without distorting it or adding overly-fictitious elements. Simply beautiful.

amazingly fantastic and gorgeous work of Canadian literature, September 22, 1998

Often in the avalanche of letters I received after I Heard the Owl Call My Name was published, people asked me what disease killed Mark Brian. I don't know. What matters is that he learned more of love and life in his three years with the Indians than most men learn in a long lifetime, and that it was he who thanked them. - from Again Calls the Owl, Craven's autobiography

Margaret Craven, the author, actually went to an Indian village to do her research and learn the culture, the tales as well as the language. Some of the characters and events in the story are based on people she met at the village, and that makes her work much more realistic and believable. Some of the themes discussed in this book are cycles or changes of life, vanishing way of life of the natives, and, most of all, acceptence of death. The only main character is the vicar himself and the conflict of the novel of his being accepted.

The book is fairly simple and straight forward, but the author describes the setting with vivid imagery, which makes me really understand and learn a lot about the Kwakiutl culture and customs, for example, in one of the chapters, she talks about the cannibal dance. The mood remains quite consistent throughout the whole book. It is not really the sadness that urges me to read on - it is the calmness and the selflessness of the native people that are so enchanting, and the closeness with nature as well. I have to agree that the beginning of the book was quite dull to begin with, and the climax did not come until the second last chapter. However, if I really read the book carefully, I can also see that every few chapters is a short, descriptive story by itself, for example, there is one about a few Indian kids going to residential school in Vancouver, and how the elders disapprove the idea. There is also another one which tells about druken Indians being cheated by a white man.

The vocabulary is fairly simple, and the novel can easily be understood by grade nines, but the meaning, or the lessons of this memorable novel really takes someone much older and much more mature to understand and appreciate. Therefore, I would only recommand this book to those of you who enjoy books about nature. All in all, this is a marvelously compelling work of Canadian literature. To conclude my presentation, I am going to read you a short quote that will give you some idea about the author's style:

Under a green spruce Marta stood by herself, her eyes on the young vicar. How thin and white he was! How long had it been there - that look on his face she had seen many times in her long life and knew well? It was not the hard winter that had placed it there. It was death gently reaching out his hand, touching the face gently, even before the owl had called the name.

Thank you!