Oyster: A Novel [Hardcover]

John Biguenet (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 4, 2002

With comparisons to Flaubert, Chekhov, and Faulkner, 0. Henry Award-winner John Biguenet earned wide acclaim for his debut short-story collection, The Torturer's Apprentice. In his much anticipated first novel, Oyster, he demonstrates the same mastery of craft and rigor of vision that led critics across the country to join Robert Olen Butler in praising this "important new writer."

Set on the Louisiana coast in 1957, Oyster recounts the engrossing tale of a deadly rivalry between two families. To avoid ruin after years of declining oyster crops, Felix and Mathilde Petitjean offer their young daughter, Therese, in marriage to 52-year-old Horse Bruneau, who holds the papers on their boat and house. Bruneau has spent his life as Felix's rival for both the Petitjeans' century-old oyster beds and, as we learn, Mathilde. But as Therese explains to Horse one night as they float in a pirogue alone in the marsh, "I don't get bought for the price of no damn boat."

These characters inhabit a harsh environment in which people save themselves, if they are to be saved at all. The rapid sequence of events of the opening of the novel is typical of the sudden violence that is never more than an insult away in the muddy wastes of the marsh. People work there without a margin, their boats mortgaged to the next harvest of shrimp or oysters, their work one of the most dangerous of daily occupations, their emotions scraped raw by the grievances they cultivate and pass down to their children as the only lasting inheritance of a life of poverty.

The spiraling violence of Oyster and the seething passions behind it drive an unpredictable tale of murder and revenge in which two women and the men who desire them play out a drama as elemental and inexorable as a Greek tragedy.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Much feted for his debut collection of stories, The Torturer's Apprentice, Biguenet follows up with a steamy first novel set on the Louisiana coast. The Petitjeans and the Bruneaus are rival oyster fishing families in Plaquemines Parish in 1957, struggling to survive in an environment rapidly falling prey to petroleum companies and their ravaging of swamp and bayou ecosystems. As it gets more difficult to hang on economically, old families begin to slip. The Petitjean family, headed by Felix, has reluctantly turned to "Horse" Bruneau for a loan. Desperate for cash, Felix and his wife, Mathilde, approve Horse's plan to marry their daughter, Therese. Therese scotches that plan by luring Horse to the Petitjean property for a supposed midnight tryst, then murdering him. When Horse's body turns up in a trawler's net, his sons Darryl ("Little Horse") and Ross (with their gentler brother, Rusty, looking on in horror) murder Therese's brother, Alton, who they blame for Horse's murder since nobody even considers that a slip of a girl like Therese could kill the powerful Horse. Darryl has always hated Alton, anyway, suspecting (rightly, as it turns out) that Alton is his half brother the fruit of an affair between Mathilde and Horse. After the murder, Sheriff Christovich, an old beau of Mathilde's, manipulates Darryl into letting Rusty work for the Petitjeans, hoping Rusty will talk. But it is Therese who exacts vengeance on the Bruneau house with the implacability of a Plaquemines Lady Macbeth. While Biguenet makes the Bruneaus, except for Rusty, a bit too villainous and Therese a bit too clever for plausibility's sake, his debut satisfyingly penetrates the curtain of gumbo clich surrounding Cajun culture. (June) Forecast: Booksellers may expect to build handily on the success of The Torturer's Apprentice with this juicy follow-up and should certainly capitalize on the novel's regional appeal.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The oyster-rich bayou country of Louisiana in the 1950s is the setting for this remarkable first novel by Biguenet, author of the O. Henry Award-winning collection of short stories The Torturer's Apprentice. The bitter family rivalry between the Bruneaus and the Petitjeans, deeply rooted in their entangled past, leads to tragedy from the outset. A marriage arranged between young Therese Petitjean and the Bruneau patriarch to shore up the Petitjeans' finances ends violently in the first chapter, and matters don't improve from there. Day-to-day life for the oyster fishermen of the period is realistically portrayed as this tale of two doomed families unfolds. Colorful characters and a story line that rips along make this work captivating from start to finish. Comparisons to Faulkner might be a stretch, but Biguenet's steamy Southern flavor is memorable. Recommended for most fiction collections. Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., VA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Ecco; 1st edition (June 4, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060198362
• ISBN-13: 978-0060198367
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,710,819 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, October 30, 2002

By 

Patrick Brans (Grenoble France) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Oyster: A Novel (Hardcover)

First of all the setting takes you away from the hustle and bustle of modern day life. This story takes place in the bayous and swamps of Louisiana in the late 1950's - a time when Oyster farmers were threatened by the polution of modern industry. I happen to come from Louisiana and can say that the author captured this very well.

Second, Biguenet's style is lively and rhythmic. He rarely takes refuge in boring verbs like "to be" or "to have", instead using more descriptive verbs to carry his sentences.

Biguenet develops the characters like an expert psychologist, making the reader feel the struggles with guilt and family loyalties. The story unfolds very naturally and as it goes on you see how some of the characters dig themselves deeper and deeper into a hole. It's hard to put the book down once you start reading.

I have also read another work by this author, "The Torturer's Apprentice", and I note that he picks interesting settings and really gets into the details of those settings. He also does a nice job of portraying the way people deal with guilt.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars WELL-WRITTEN, BUT..., January 15, 2003

By 

Larry L. Looney (Austin, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Oyster: A Novel (Hardcover)

I would really prefer to give this book 3½ stars - it's not as bad as the 3 star rating would indicate. Biguenet is a fine writer - his short story collection, THE TORTURER'S APPRENTICE, which was published in 2001, simply blew me away. I was anticipating reading OYSTER immensely on the strength of that earlier work. The novel, however, reads like the author has turned himself down a notch. The characters are well-developed, and the story is an interesting one - and the setting, costal Louisiana in the late 1950s, is vividly depicted. I guess it's just that he seemed to be taking more risks with his shorter fiction, and not just for the sake of appearing to be `innovative' - there was an educated, controlled abandon about those stories that was actually rather thrilling to experience as a reader. By comparison, the novel hit me more like a made-for-TV movie - albeit a well-made one. Too much of it was predictable - the characters' personalities and the conflicts they engendered, as well as several of the plot turns, could be seen coming `with the headlights on'.

I'm sure that the author will continue to work - he's got an amazing talent, just read the short story collection if you haven't, it's breathtaking. I'm hoping that this novel turns out to be a stepping-stone to something greater - I know he has it in him.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Story Told Well, December 17, 2004

By 

Gregory Bascom (San Jose Costa Rica) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Oyster: A Novel (Paperback)

This review is for the first Ecco Paperback edition published in 2003, 291 pages. Ecco Press is an imprint of HarperCollins.

OYSTER by John Biguenet is the story of two rival families, the Bruneau's and the Petitjean's, who have the largest oyster leases in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. Fifty-two year old Darryl Bruneau holds loans on Felix Petitjean's home and boat. Felix is on the verge of default. To avoid losing everything, Felix agrees to give Darryl his eighteen-year old daughter, Therese.

Oops, Therese has other ideas. She tells Darryl, "I don't get bought for the price on no damn boat." In one of the most engaging first chapters I've ever read, Therese irrevocably upsets her daddy's plans. Go to the bookstore and read the first seven pages of OYSTER by John Biguenet; I'll wager that you buy the book.

With masterful dialogue and just enough sensory detail, John Biguenet captures the sounds and feel of the oysterman's plight in the fall of 1957. There are some rough passages, like Mrs. Petitjean's confession to Therese, and occasionally Biguenet goes head hopping with omniscient POV, but he never forgets that it's all about story. This is a good story told well.