Susan Fletcher's Oystercatchers - a review;

I realise this book is quite old now (it was published in 2008), but that never puts me off reading something, if someone recommends it to me. I've never read Eve Green, or anything else by Susan Fletcher, but I'm definitely going to be scouting the charity shops' book sections for her work from now on. She writes beautifully - everything she describes you can taste, feel, smell and see. The book is set, at first, in Stackpole (in Wales - I actually went to Stackpole when I was eleven for a week with school) and later in Norfolk, and how Susan Fletcher writes of the sea (which becomes a character in this novel) and wildlife, and just scenery in general, is breathtaking at times.

Her depiction of people and their actions is also spot on - Moira (the main character) is not necessarily a likeable person - though I really warmed to her - she has many regrets and dislikes herself. At the beginning we learn that her sister, Amy, is in a coma following an accident in the sea, and the novel is written from Moira's perspective - at times in first person and others, in third. At no point during this book did I feel as though I was reading 'writing' - it reads as an account, from a woman who is confused about herself and her surroundings (from an early age up until her mid-twenties) at a boarding school and later when she lives with her husband.

The novel is about a woman searching for forgiveness whilst struggling with loneliness and her inability to bond with others; to fit in. Through telling the story of her life to her sister as she lies in a hospital bed, Moira hopes to explain her actions and through her doing so, the reader comes to understand why Moira is the way she is.

The only person Moira has any sort of deep relationship with is her aunt Matilda - a lonely actress living in London, desperately searching for love. She relies on tarot cards and 'fate' (something that pops up quite a lot in the novel), and Fletcher describes this artistic, free spirited woman with limitations incredibly well.

It is a novel of dreams, envy, loss and betrayal, one that is poignant and evoking, perfect in its description of both people and place.