Oystercatchers by Susan Fletcher is a slow walk through one girl's life. She recalls everything to the sister she resented as that sister lies in a coma four years on from her accident. When I say slow, I don't mean this in a derogatory way, I mean it in a gradual undoing, something that takes time rather than picked at quickly. Flecther's style is lyrical, almost prose like. In fact when I first began reading I kept stalling on all the word chimes within a sentence. I then starting looking for them and mulling over them as if they were lines of poetry. I had to stop doing it as I was losing the sense of the story.
Moira is the first born, a sea child. She loves the coast and the sea and her parents. She remains an only child until she is eleven years old when her mother, after several miscarriages, falls pregnant and Moira realises everything will change. Moira is bright and wins a scholarship. As if to punish her parents for daring to produce a sibling she chooses a boarding school on the other side of the country to attend. But life isn't easy. Moira is different. She is lonely, doesn't make friends but even so she hates going home in the holidays, hates seeing her little sister who has changed everything.
Moira isn't an easy person to like but I felt sorry for her. She is awkward and doesn't know how to form relationships and her loneliness rings out. It is a sad story. Moira has held on to so much resentment that it eats her up and led her not to let anyone into her life. The school years seemed to hang on her, despite her brilliant academic record, because socially she was inept and was thought of as strange by everyone.
Moira thinks no one can love her and is mistrustful when a boy suddenly shows interests in her. Now her sister lies in a coma and all her past comes at her. She feel responsible for the accident and feels the need to unload all the hurt she has caused to her and her parents.
In the back of the book there is an interview with the author - these things I scour! I read Fletcher's first novel Eve Green and loved it. I'd been searching for a new book from her for years. This didn't disappoint. Fletcher has an unusual way of writing sentences here, stripped back, often feeling like abandoned words which works with the tone of the story. Also Fletcher wrote in both first and third person. Moira speaks to her sister in the first person but when she is looking back, reliving the years she writes in third person. The story is based on the Welsh coast and in Norfolk and it's coast. The sea features heavily in Moira's dreams and in where she is brought up and lives after leaving school. Fletcher admits that some people gave up with the book because Moira isn't likable- she's not but there is something about her self-destructive behaviour that is so sad and as a reader I wanted to know that some good would come to her life that she would see that she was loved. It's worth it to keep reading!
Moira is the first born, a sea child. She loves the coast and the sea and her parents. She remains an only child until she is eleven years old when her mother, after several miscarriages, falls pregnant and Moira realises everything will change. Moira is bright and wins a scholarship. As if to punish her parents for daring to produce a sibling she chooses a boarding school on the other side of the country to attend. But life isn't easy. Moira is different. She is lonely, doesn't make friends but even so she hates going home in the holidays, hates seeing her little sister who has changed everything.
Moira isn't an easy person to like but I felt sorry for her. She is awkward and doesn't know how to form relationships and her loneliness rings out. It is a sad story. Moira has held on to so much resentment that it eats her up and led her not to let anyone into her life. The school years seemed to hang on her, despite her brilliant academic record, because socially she was inept and was thought of as strange by everyone.
Moira thinks no one can love her and is mistrustful when a boy suddenly shows interests in her. Now her sister lies in a coma and all her past comes at her. She feel responsible for the accident and feels the need to unload all the hurt she has caused to her and her parents.
In the back of the book there is an interview with the author - these things I scour! I read Fletcher's first novel Eve Green and loved it. I'd been searching for a new book from her for years. This didn't disappoint. Fletcher has an unusual way of writing sentences here, stripped back, often feeling like abandoned words which works with the tone of the story. Also Fletcher wrote in both first and third person. Moira speaks to her sister in the first person but when she is looking back, reliving the years she writes in third person. The story is based on the Welsh coast and in Norfolk and it's coast. The sea features heavily in Moira's dreams and in where she is brought up and lives after leaving school. Fletcher admits that some people gave up with the book because Moira isn't likable- she's not but there is something about her self-destructive behaviour that is so sad and as a reader I wanted to know that some good would come to her life that she would see that she was loved. It's worth it to keep reading!
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