Last month I mentioned that during late May into June Norfolk would be hosting a three week long literary festival called New Writing Worlds 08 Human: Nature – a celebration of writing and nature organised by the Norwich based New Writing Partnership. One of the events, which I attended, was a creative writing workshop ’The Story Teller’s Eye’ held last week at the RSPB nature reserve at Titchwell. The workshop was to look at ‘how we can use landscape and the natural world in storytelling, to set the scene, enhance the mood, or even as a character in its own right’. It was run by the writer Susan Fletcher who is the author of this month’s Book Club choice Oystercatchers.
Susan was born in Birmingham in 1979 and studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Her first novel Eve Green (2004) set in Wales won the 2004 Whitbread First Novel Award and sold a quarter of a million copies after being picked as Richard & Judy summer read.
In Oystercatchers, first published in 2007, the central character is Moira Stone who recounts her life story to her comatose sister Amy. Rachel Hore has described it as ’an unusual story of love and betrayal…Her evocation of place is magnificent’. Much of that place is located in North Norfolk. To quote from Rachel Hore again ‘Fletcher works that rich vein of poetic prose in which characters’ emotions are closely bound up with objects and landscape’.
Oyster Catchers is a roller coaster of a book. The very short sentences made me feel like the author was trying to catch her breath throughout the whole story. Maybe it was an attempt to show how thoughts often swirl around in the mind but I would have enjoyed the book more if the sentences had slowed down a little in places. I found it quite exhausting. A more measured approach might have reflected the hours and hours that Moira must have spent by Amy’s bedside.
Otherwise I enjoyed the book for it’s use of places I know – Titchwell, Blakeney, Cley, etc but I wonder if the majority of readers who do not know North Norfolk would have made of these very personal references. Would they make sense? Does it matter if they don’t? I think it does. The book should have a warning written on it that a visit to North Norfolk is essential to enjoy the book to its fullest.
Take a deep breath before you start this book!
Sarah
I wasn't that interested in the landscape aspect of this book. It was a nice background but the pschological aspects seemed to overide any descriptions of the coast etc. This is a book about people not places, its about truth, guilt, love, trust etc. The landscape is a just a canvass on which lives are lived. It is what is painted on the canvas by human actions which is important not the canvas itself.
Liz
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