Oystercatchers [Hardcover]

 

 

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In this melancholic, confessional novel, Moira Stone sits by the bedside of her teenage sister, Amy, telling of her days that are now spent in a white, west-facing house on an English coast with her artist husband Ray. Meanwhile, Amy lies on her back in a hospital bed, in a coma with her eyes permanently closed, "held forever silently beneath the surface."

Moira talks about the years leading up to the tragedy when Amy fell from such a great height, and was almost left to bleed to death on top of Church Rock. Moira ultimately blames herself for the disaster and is torn apart by the fact that she wasn't a more caring sister, and at hand when Amy was growing up. "I'd have bore you with far better grace and I might have enjoyed you if I had stayed in Wales."

But Moira's guilt is also mirrored by the fact that she often saw her younger sister as a third wheel, her late arrival, almost eleven years on, proving to be a disruption to Moira's romantic life with her parents. Indeed, up until Amy's unexpected birth, all three forged a quiet and peaceful life for themselves in Stackpole on the isolated Pembrokeshire coast, with its "lily ponds and its chimney smoke."

"I thought it would always be just us three - my parents, and me" she later confides and when enough, this delicate family dynamic that Moira has savored and created, is finally upset. A straight A student with a unique aptitude for science, her fragile existence is also upset when she obtains a scholarship and is eventually packed by her parents off to Lockham Thorpe, a lonely and overcast boarding school far away on the Eastern side of England.

So begins the sad and bitter vigil of the young woman who feels as though her parents have ignored her in favor of her younger sister. And as she grows older, she becomes a somewhat nerd and bookish girl, who must now try to find a way through the empty years that lie ahead. Although the other girls often pick on her, she eventually finds succor in scientific study with only her memories from home such as the crab fishing at Stackpole Quay and Skomer Island, to keep her company.

As the years pass, Moira seems to ease into the steady rhythms of the Lockham Thorpe, only sporadically receiving letters from her mother and the occasional card from her elderly neighbours, the Bannisters, who remember her birthday, out of sadness and out of guilt. Of course, she goes home for holidays, but never seems to fit in to the house nor anything else, and she's for more irritated than pleased to see the ugly, small and fat Baby Amy.

Luckily, solace arrives in the form of Moira's exotic aunt Til, a middle-aged actress, who like a warm wind from a southerly place, seems to blow away all of the storm clouds and bitterness that seem to characterize much of Moira's life. Til, who believes in crystals and oils and the power of positive thought, talks of London places and the theatre, and beguiles Moira with tales of her busy life in the big city.

The young woman is also drawn to Ray, a stranger whom she meets when she escapes for a night of fun with some of the girls from school. An intelligent and thoughtful adventurer and artist, he keeps in touch with Mora, writing passionate letters to her of his world travels. This life in Ray, this art and appetite catches Moira from the start, especially the letters as he dares to write these things to a girl he barely knows.

Author Susan Fletcher beautifully traces Moira's "black-shaped sharp heart of guilt" as she's thrust into her own future, the small joys and travails of her life balanced against the terrible weight of Amy's hopeless condition. Introspective and atmospheric, the author skillfully manipulates the storms of Moira's later life, especially her marriage with the grey restlessness of the natural world around her.

The turbulent sea almost becomes a symbol for all of the cruelty, sadness and remorse that has shaped much of Moira's life," with its waves high and gulls above them, and all of the caves and arches, and blow-holes hissing with rough water." Indeed, The Oystercatchers is constantly filled with these powerful images as Fletcher's prose proves to be an absolute feast for the imagination and the senses.

Amy's accident seems to have finally taught Moira some hard life lessons about love and how we live our lives and how we grieve and also how we hope. In the process, she learns that life recovers and we carry on, in spite of our losses and mistakes, especially when we let our passions and hatreds and deceitfulness sometimes get the better of us.

This novel, is in the end, about the power of life, the turbulent sea that steadily pounds the isolated cliff-faces of Wales and the windswept coastlines of Norfolk, serving as a type of allegory for Moira's search for happiness and her need to obtain forgiveness from Amy. Mike Leonard July 07.

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