“Oystercatchers” is a moving confession of harrowing guilt Moira Stone delivers by her sister’s bedside. Amy has lain in a coma for years after falling from a rock, and as the estranged Moira keeps her company evening after evening we learn through a monologue that leaps between the present and the past the story of the two sisters’ relationship and mainly of Moira’s life; of her resentment for her mother’s pregnancy; of her subsequent self-exile in a boarding school in Norfolk; of her isolation there which is self-imposed but also a consequence of her unconventional appearance and behaviour.

Although apparently confident in her ways and indifferent to the other girls’ bullying, Moira secretly wishes to fit in. And yet, her overpowering insecurity leads her to distrust the affection that is unreservedly hers and to sabotage the love and attention she believes to be unworthy of.

The sea alone makes Moira feel in her element. Other than her remarkable intelligence and proficiency in sciences that win her a scholarship and give her an advantage of sorts over her peers, only the serenity that washes over her by the seaside abates her profound unhappiness and feelings of maladjustment.

Having been shunned and avoided by Moira since her birth, Amy – eleven years her junior – tries incessantly to get close to her older sister and impress her. Moira tolerates and even observes her little sister with curiosity, but never lets her in, much to her parents’ sad bewilderment. Not even Moira’s early marriage to her high-school boyfriend sets her heart at ease, her husband’s unconditional love failing to assure her she is part of something bigger than the little world she’s locked herself into.

As it often happens, it takes a violent tragedy for this tormented young woman to revisit her tentative steps through life and analyse what has kept her from loving unhinderedly and letting others love her.