Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Compelling tale. , 21 Mar 2007
Sixteen-year-old Amy is in a coma. Her sister, Moira, sits beside her telling her about how sorry she is to not have been a better person, or sister, and is seeking forgiveness. She feels it's her fault that Amy is in hospital and is seeking redemption through her conversations with her. Moira talks about how unkind she has been in her life and the cruelties that she has committed. However, life hasn't always been good to her either and she has suffered at the hands of other people. Moira was an only child until the age of 11, and felt abandoned when Amy came into her life. Shut away at boarding school her resentment grew. She had to cope with the torments of her roommates and led a lonely life until she met the guy who was to become her husband. We also meet Aunt Matilda, who is another lonely character, who is filled with a sense of false happiness and is desperate for love but never quite finding it.
This is a dark tale of envy, loss, loneliness and betrayal, with love and trust being the most desired of all the emotions.
Susan Fletcher spins a story so fluidly that she makes me feel as if I am sitting beside her listening, rather than reading the words from a page. She has a wonderful way of drawing the reader in with her opening sentences and leaving them unable to put the book down.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Tricky to like, 1 Jan 2009
The author said that her heroine, Moira, was 'complicated damaged and tricky to like'. The book is beautifully written but I found Moira to be so selfish that I couldn't like her at all. She had an unhappy childhood and a lonely time at school, but never made the slightest attempt to make friends or to get on with other people. She was frequently quite cruel and was completely self obsessed.
This, together with the fact that none of the other characters (with the exception of Moira's husband Ray) were particularly likeable, made the book, for me, almost impossible to read.
I read Oystercatchers Over Christmas and can honestly say that I certainly wouldn't have finished the book had this not been the last unread book in my house.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dark, poetic, compelling, 22 Feb 2008
I had eagerly awaited this book because I so enjoyed `Eve Green' - as much for the poetry of Susan Fletcher's language as for the story itself. In `Oystercatchers' there are no superfluous words or dialogue. At first, the style seemed jumpy, interspersed with sentences without a verb and commas where I would not expect them. After a while, though, the stark minimalism became mesmerising and `normal' writing dull in comparison.
`Oystercatchers' is much darker than `Eve Green'. Its central character, Moira, is hard to like. She is not someone a reader would wish to identify with. But such is the author's skill that as the story unfolded I became engrossed in Moira's life and began to understand in part why she is like she is.
Sitting at her sister's bedside in an intensive care unit, Moira tells the story in retrospect, alternating between first and third person. Full of remorse, she blames herself for Amy's accident, for not loving her and not spending time with her. But at the age of eleven she saw Amy's birth as an intrusion that shattered her cosy childhood with her parents. This is the focus around which the story revolves.
Having exiled herself to a school in faraway Norfolk, where the other girls make fun of her, she is lonely, immersing herself in her studies and her fascination with science. Distanced from her Pembrokeshire home, her only constant is her Aunt Til who visits from London and takes her out.
The progress of an unattractive school career into adulthood could have been so dull, but Susan Fletcher makes it an engrossing read. It is her insight into her characters as much as her poetic prose that makes this seemingly unappealing novel so attractive. And throughout is the pervasive presence of the sea, spray sparkling against the rocks, the tang of seaweed, the taste of salt on lips.
Try it and see what you think. I loved it, but it might not appeal to everyone.
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