Oyster (novel)
Encyclopedia

Plot introduction

In Outer Maroo, a fictional town in the outback
Outback
The Outback is the vast, remote, arid area of Australia, term colloquially can refer to any lands outside the main urban areas. The term "the outback" is generally used to refer to locations that are comparatively more remote than those areas named "the bush".-Overview:The outback is home to a...

 which doesn't appear on maps, outsiders disappear and there is a queerly pungent smell, the Old Fuckatoo...

Plot summary

In a town highly suspicious of the government and of outsiders in general, the arrival of a charismatic figure from the desert—Oyster—occasions an intensification of the town's insularity and repression of dissident voices. The conjunction of conservative forms of Christianity and anti-government landowners is ripe for the messianic presence of Oyster and the cult community he establishes, a community closely integrated into the shadowy capitalism of the area's illegal opal trafficking.

The fragmented structure of the novel, in which various moments in the past are interspersed with events in the present, generates heightened suspense and tension as its several sub-plots come together in the apocalytpic destruction of the town and the cult. The paranoia and violence with which the town polices its "lost" status are repeatedly delineated, until events come to a head and the vicious forms of control begin to unravel.

Women are crucial to the destabilisation and destruction of the menace represented above all by powerful men. The discourse of proud outsiderness on the part of these men is highlighted as being hypocritical and self-serving, while the real outsiders are revealed to be mostly women, and men who do not wield social power.

Characters

  • Ma Beresford
  • Bill Beresford, Ma's husband.
  • Charles Given, a former preacher.
  • Vivian Given, 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
    Bible
    The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

    .
  • 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 bisexual.
  • Susannah Rover, the local schoolteacher, who ends up provoking the town-dwellers over their funny business, and gets 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
    Brisbane
    Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...

     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' son. He grows up to be a cattle herder, and Andrew calls him a 'Communist' for questioning the status quo
  • 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
    South Africa
    The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

     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
    Singapore
    Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

     when he was a junior officer in the army.
  • Robert John Blow, Major Miner's friend when he was in Singapore, who was a Taoist.
  • Pete Burnett
  • Amy, an American girl from Boston
    Boston
    Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

     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
    Mathematics
    Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

     and is unstable. After high school she decided not to go to Wellesley College and bought a flight ticket to India
    India
    India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

     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
    Great Barrier Reef
    The Great Barrier Reef is the world'slargest reef system composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 2,600 kilometres over an area of approximately...

    . She then met Gideon and Oyster, and moved to Outer Maroo.
  • Stephen, Amy's brother. He has a cottage in Maine
    Maine
    Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...

    .
  • 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
    Israel
    The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

    , spurns her for having married a non-Jew. She doesn't understand the people from Outer Maroo's passivity and lack of civil disobedience
    Civil disobedience
    Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance. It is one form of civil resistance...

    .
  • Angelo, a.k.a. Gideon. He is Nick's son.
  • Nick McCree, whose real name is Nikos Makarios. He was born in Greece
    Greece
    Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

     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 tends to keep silent and therefore people 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
    Goodna, Queensland
    Goodna is a suburb on the eastern edge of the City of Ipswich in Queensland, Australia.It is bounded to the north by the Brisbane River. Founded in 1856 when the area was still part of New South Wales, it celebrated its 150 year anniversary in 2006. Its beginnings can be traced back further to...

    . Jess was sent to a convent in Roma
    Roma, Queensland
    Roma is a town in the western Darling Downs area of Queensland, Australia, by rail WNW of Brisbane. It is situated at the junction of the Warrego and Carnarvon highways...

     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
    Bushie
    A Bushie, or less commonly, Bushite or Bushy, is a term referring to a political supporter of George H. W. Bush or George W. Bush. More specifically, it is used to denote the inner circle of Bush advisors, appointees, and acolytes...

    . 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.

Main themes

  • Life in the outback, with the small-town culture, opal
    Opal
    Opal is an amorphous form of silica related to quartz, a mineraloid form, not a mineral. 3% to 21% of the total weight is water, but the content is usually between 6% to 10%. It is deposited at a relatively low temperature and may occur in the fissures of almost any kind of rock, being most...

    -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.

External links

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