Oystercatchers

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The second novel from highly acclaimed young writer Susan Fletcher, author of the award-winning 'Eve Green'

Amy lies in a coma. Her older sister, Moira, comes to her in the evenings, sits beside her in a green-walled hospital room. Here, Moira confesses. She admits to her childhood selfishness which deeply hurt her family and to the self-imposed exile from the dramatic Welsh coast that had dominated and captivated her childhood; to her savagery at boarding school; to the wild, bitter and destructive heart that she carried into her adult life. Moira knows this: that she's been a poor daughter, and a deceptive wife. But it is as Amy lies half-dying that she sees the real truth: she's been a cruel sister, and it is this cruelty that has led them both here, to this hospital bed.

A novel about trust, loss and loneliness, 'Oystercatchers' is a love story with a profound darkness at its core.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Most Western philosophers see guilt and envy as negative, paralyzing emotions that can only be overcome by heartfelt repentance. Fletcher's riveting, even uplifting second novel (after Eve Green, which won a Whitbread Award for first fiction) zeroes in on the long-term impact of these feelings by introducing readers to 27-year-old Moira Stone and her comatose 16-year-old sister, Amy. A frequent visitor to her sister's bedside, Moira speaks aloud to this sibling she barely knows, describing the conundrums and conflicts that define her life. Along the way, she reveals the loneliness, social isolation, and distrust that threaten her marriage and leave her vulnerable to unhealthy choices and dangerous relationships. Beautifully written, this confessional dissection of troubled youth is lyrical and honest, its message subtly woven into a story about love, betrayal, and the power of the spoken word to heal and comfort. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries.-Eleanor J. Bader, Brooklyn, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Regret and jealousy consume the overweening protagonist of this frustrating novel by the Whitbread-winning author of Eve Green. Moira is a 27-year-old scientist whose 16-year-old sister, Amy, is in a coma, the result of a fall four years earlier. The accident is made more tragic because Moira, who was away at boarding school when her sister was born, took the new addition to the family as a personal slight and never developed a relationship with her. Instead, she ignored her family and later married Ray, an artist and doting husband. Now she would like to make amends with her sister, but it is too late. Largely told from the perspective of a fledgling adult reflecting on her childhood, the story feels like an extended therapy session, with narration alternating between third- and first-person, allowing a dissociation between the grown Moira and her lonely, moody adolescent self. Overall, there's an air of self-importance that's difficult to penetrate. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

School Library Journal Review

Adult/High School-Moira, like the protagonist in Fletcher's Eve Green (Norton, 2004), reflects upon her childhood and adolescence in this atmospheric novel. She was raised an only child on the coast of Wales until she was 11. Then she was sent to boarding school on the other side of England, and her sister, Amy, was born. Once away, Moira feels alienated from her parents, her classmates, and the landscape of her childhood home. That she, not her beautiful classmate Heather, attracts the attention of a local boy is as big a surprise to Moira as to anyone, even after she marries the young artist. Her deep-felt belief in her isolation stunts all of her relationships until a tragedy involving Amy makes Moira realize that she is not cold, without words, without love. When she once again embraces her abiding love for the ocean, for the coast, she opens herself up to her love for her husband, for her parents, and even for the sister whom she has always held at arm's length. Moira's story, told to a comatose Amy, alternates between the first and third person; it is confusing at first, but patient readers will find hope in Moira's growth.-Jenny Gasset, Orange County Public Library, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

"*Starred Review* Sixteen-year-old Amy has lain in a hospital bed for four years, comatose as the result of a head injury. Countless times her sister, Moira, older by 11 years, has sat by the bedside, telling her sister the story of her life. Telling? Confessing is more like it, for Moira, who blames herself for the accident, has always resented her younger sister, blaming her for usurping her place in the family: a scholarship student, Moira was sent off to a girls' school just months before Amy's birth. And, though a brilliant student, she was desperately unhappy at school: a tall, silent, slender girl with glasses, big feet, and big hands, she was unpopular, laughed at, called chicken tits, odd-looking, and worse. Moira tells her often bleak story in a voice that fluctuates between first and third person, making it at once intimate and removed, capturing the adolescent she was and the scientist she would become. Fletcher is a novelist with the soul of a poet, and Oystercatchers is exquisitely written and unafraid of risk: its pace is unhurried, and its protagonist, Moira, is often unlikable, but any reader who cares for gorgeous writing, richly realized setting, and character will find much here to treasure."--"Cart, Michael" Copyright 2007 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

Whitbread winner Fletcher (Alphabet of Dreams, 2006) chronicles the life of an older sister who feels very, very sorry for herself. It's somewhat unreasonable of narrator Moira, since it's 16-year-old Amy who's been in a coma for four years. But Moira's nose has been out of joint ever since Amy was born when she was 11; the very news of her mother's pregnancy, after three traumatic miscarriages, prompts the clever, angry girl to choose a scholarship at a far-off boarding school over offers from institutions closer to her just-scraping-by family's home in an English seaside town. The other students at Locke Hall Residential School for Girls aren't very nice to tall, skinny, bespectacled Moira, who excels in the classroom and endures all else, resenting the anxious, loving letters from her mother and utterly refusing to engage with baby Amy on her infrequent visits home. Readers might be more inclined to sympathize if Moira weren't already overflowing with self-pity, convinced that no one cares about her despite considerable evidence to the contrary. Indeed, it's difficult to understand why budding artist Ray would dump Heather, nastiest of the Locke Hall bullies, to write letters from his world tour to sullen, who-could-love-me Moira. She marries him instead of going to medical school, a move the author may see as a tribute to love but which comes across as another self-inflicted injury to add to Moira's pile of grievances. She rewards her talented, adoring husband by taking up with his brother, and it's darkly hinted that Amy's catastrophic fall from a huge rock is somehow related to the fact that Moira used to swim to it. Moira's monologues at Amy's hospital bedside are meant to demonstrate her new maturity and compassion, her growing love for Amy and Ray, but after her litany of miseries that seem almost entirely her own doing, few will care much about her alleged redemption. Beautiful prose, particularly the evocative descriptions of landscape, isn't enough to redeem such a sour heroine. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.