Oystercatchers

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

'Like Candida Clark, Fletcher works that rich vein of poetic prose in which characters' emotions are closely bound up with objects and landscape…a commendably and disturbing successor to “Eve Green”.' Rachel Hore, Independent on Sunday

'A mysterious, elemental and, at times, beautifully poetic novel.' Waterstones Books Quarterly

'…Fletcher enhances her reputation with this second novel about the relationship between two sisters…Fletcher has a remarkable talent with words…her approach to the world is side-on, not direct; she is attuned to the ambiguities, the spaces, the gaps left in language, the things that are not spoken; she imbues inanimate objects with a life of their own, a history and a personality and a voice. Fletcher is the woman writer par excellence: intelligent, perceptive, intuitive…British readers looking for a local equivalent to Alice Munro won't have to look much further…She is a highly talented writer and fully deserves the acclaim she has received – and the popularity that goes with it.' The Scotsman

‘Her evocation of place is magnificent…Here is a commendably ambitious and disturbing successor to “Eve Green”.’ Sunday Tribune

‘A work of exceptionally beautiful prose.' Joanna Briscoe, in the Observer ‘Books of the Year’

About the author

Susan Fletcher was born in 1979 in Birmingham. She graduated from the UEA Creative Writing Course and now lives in the West Midlands. This is her second novel.