Oyster (novel)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Oyster
Author Janette Turner Hospital
Country Australia
Language English
Genre(s) Novel
Publisher Virago Press
Publication date 1996
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 453 pp

Oyster is a 1996 novel by Janette Turner Hospital.

Contents

[edit] Plot introduction

In Outer Maroo, a fictional town in the outback which doesn't appear on maps, opal fossickers disappear and there is a queerly pungent smell lying, the Old Fuckatoo...

[edit] Plot summary

Ma Beresford receives a letter from a deceased relative, about opal spots, which attracts increasingly more out-of-town transient opal fossickers. Jake Digby drives two strangers into town; Nick and Sarah. He needs to be paid for the water he has brought and the Beresfords are off in Brisbane, so Mr Prophet offers to pay.

Later, inebriated Susannah Rover asks about the shady money dealings going on locally, why the town doesn't appear on maps and why strangers are not welcome. She is taken away and kicked to death by town-dwellers, then eaten up by feral dingos to wipe away the evidence. At the same time, Amy, an American visitor, goes to the post-office to hand in a letter and asks Mercy if she remembers about the cult at the Reef, which the latter brushes away. Later Mercy takes Sarah to her house to protect her, and Nick stays at the pub where he talks to Bernie.

The next day, Donny and Tim attempt to kidnap Mercy but she manages to get out of the car, which exploded with the two men still inside - this would have been her comeuppance for putting up Sarah. Mercy then visits Ma Beresford, who tells her not to worry, because she is still alive and so are her relatives. Junior Godwin later visits Mercy, who tells him her dogs are dead. Mr Prophet then enjoins Mercy to go to the Living Word Hall more often.

Later, Nick visits Jess and tells him he has stolen Andrew Godwin's lorry and saw the Reef. He could drive to Quilpie with it because it has enough petrol, but he wants to find his son first. Mercy takes Sarah to see Nick; Major Minor will hide the two strangers in his house. Later, Dorothy Godwin visits her son Junior, followed by Pete Burnett. Mercy then attends a Living Word mass, and is mesmerised.

There is then an analepsis into Oyster's arrival in Outer Maroo - without a car, an injured foot, mesmerising look and orating skills. Oyster talks Andrew Godwin into letting them use his opal-strewn land for everyone to get rich.

Unsent letters reveal that at the Reef people work all day and pray all night, are not allowed to talk, and that a lot of babies and other people simply disappear.

Mercy then dreams of Susannah, and Oyster. The latter takes her to the Reef where she is manipulated into giving him a blow-job; after some mass she has to do it again, and is then told she can stay with the Prophets...

Finally, the whole area round the Reef is burning; Ethel prophesies it will be raining soon.

[edit] Characters

  • Ma Beresford
  • Bill Beresford, Ma's husband.
  • Charles Mercy, a former preacher.
  • Vivian Mercy, Charles Mercy's wife.
  • Mercy Given, a sixteen-year-old girl who works at the local post-office after school. She is a member of the Living Word church and as such is not allowed to watch television or listen to the radio, though she craves for it. When younger, she would spend her days reading the Bible.
  • Brian Given, Mercy's brother. He is a favourite of Oyster's, who uses him for sexual pleasure.
  • Oyster, a stranger at first, he soon becomes the local guru. He is a bisexual.
  • Susannah Rover, the local schoolteacher, who ends up provoking the town-dwellers over their funny business, and get killed for that.
  • Jake Digby, a man who drives strangers to Outer Maroo.
  • Andrew Godwin, he is unfaithful to his wife.
  • Dorothy Godwin, Andrew's wife. She is a kleptomaniac. She went to an elite boarding-school in Brisbane as her family were rich wool sellers. She disparages opal mining as 'grubby' work.
  • Alice Godwin, the Godwins's daughter. She later lives with JUnior and Delia.
  • Junior Godwin, the Godwins's son. He grows up to be a cattle herder, and Andrew calls him a 'Communist'
  • Delia, Junior's wife.
  • Ross Godwin, Andrew Godwin's middle son who shot himself because he was in love with Josie O'Leary.
  • Josie O'Leary, Andrew Godwin's stockman's teenage daughter, whom he has sex with.
  • Mr Prophet, whose real name is Dukke vanKerk. He is from South Africa and lives 100 miles away from Outer Maroo.
  • Beverley Prophet, Mr Prophet's daughter.
  • Ethel, a Murri girl. She lives with the Godwins and Andrew has sex with her.
  • Major Miner. He was in Singapore when he was a junior officer in the army. In Outer Maroo, he gets lonely.
  • Robert John Blow, Major Miner's friend when he was in Singapore, who was a Taoist.
  • Pete Burnett
  • Amy, an American girl from Boston there as a tourist. She is later renamed Rose of Sharon by Oyster. Her mother left home to live with artists, and her father does research in mathematics and is unstable. After high school she decided not to go to Wellesley College and bought a flight ticket to India with the tuition refund. There she stayed in a community with a guru, who enjoined her to go to the reef, which she took to be the Great Barrier Reef. She then met Gideon and Oyster, and moved to Outer Maroo.
  • Stephen, Amy's brother. He has a cottage in Maine.
  • Sarah Cohen, Amy's stepmother. She is an American Jew. Although she lost her grandparents in the Holocaust, she is unorthodox, so much so that her sister, who has moved to Israel, spurns her for having married a non-Jew. She doesn't understand the people from Outer Maroo's passivity and lack of civil disobedience.
  • Angelo, a.k.a. Gideon. He is Nick's son.
  • Nick McCree, whose real name is Nikos Makarios. He was born in Greece but his family moved to Australia when he was a child. He retains a faint foreign accent. His wife left him for another man and he won custody.
  • Donny Becker, a man who helpe Mercy get away from the Reef.
  • Bernie O'Donoghue, the local publican.
  • Jess Hyde, she works in the pub. She is mute and therefore people tend to tell her their secrets. Her father was a railway ganger who killed a man in a drunken scuffle, was sent to jail and killed himself there. Subsequently, her mother took to drinking and was sent to a rehabilitation centre in Goodna. Jess was sent to a convent in Roma at age seven. She then ran away, was nearly raped, and eventually arrived at Outer Maroo.
  • Mrs Dempsey, an old lady whom Charles Given visits on her deathbed.
  • Tim Doolan, an opal-grinder for Bernie.
  • Bugger Harvey, an opal fossicker and a bushie. He is friends with Murris.
  • Simon Peter, a.k.a. Rob. In a letter he says he loves Outer Maroo and enjoins Luce, his ex-girlfriend, to come join him.
  • Matt. In a letter he writes to his brother Jimbo, to say he needs money to leave Outer Maroo.

[edit] Main themes

  • Life in the outback, with the small-town culture, opal-mining, the fact that inhabitants are often people who wanted to forget about their previous life.
  • Cults and their corrosive effect on members of a cult.

[edit] References to other works

[edit] External links