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From Amazon
Oscar Hopkins is a high-strung preacher's kid with hydrophobia and noisy knees. Lucinda Leplastrier is a frizzy-haired heiress who impulsively buys a glass factory with the inheritance forced on her by a well-intentioned adviser. In the early parts of this lushly written book, author Peter Carey renders the seminal turning points in his protagonists' childhoods as exquisite 19th-century set pieces. Young Oscar, denied the heavenly fruit of a Christmas pudding by his cruelly stern father, forever renounces his father's religion in favor of the Anglican Church. "Dear God," Oscar prays, "if it be Thy will that Thy people eat pudding, smite him!" Lucinda's childhood trauma involves a beautiful doll bought by her struggling mother with savings from the jam jar; in a misguided attempt to tame the doll's unruly curls, young Lucinda mutilates her treasure beyond repair. Neither of these coming-of-age stories quite explains how the grownup Oscar and Lucinda each develop a guilty passion for gambling. Oscar plays the horses while at school, and Lucinda, now an orphaned heiress, finds comfort in a game of cards with an odd collection of acquaintances. When the two finally meet, on board a ship bound for New South Wales, they are bound by their affinity for risk, their loneliness, and their awkwardly blossoming (but unexpressed) mutual affection. Their final high-stakes folly--transporting a crystal palace of a church across (literally) godforsaken terrain--strains plausibility, and events turn ghastly as Oscar plays out his bid for Lucinda's heart. Yet even the unconvincing plot turns are made up for by Carey's rich prose and the tale's unpredictable outcome. Although love proves to be the ultimate gamble for Oscar and Lucinda, the story never strays too far from the terrible possibility that even the most thunderstruck lovers can remain isolated in parallel lives.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
"If Illywhacker astounded us with its imaginative richness, this latest Carey novel does so again, with a masterly sureness of touch added. It's a story, in a sense the story, of mid-19th century England and Australia, narrated by a man of our time, and therefore permeated with modern consciousness," stated PW. The novel won the Booker Prize.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful,
By GZA "gza" (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Oscar and Lucinda: movie tie-in edition (Vintage International) (Paperback)
Oscar and Lucinda is the best book by my favourite living author. I am a failed writer, and it is thanks to authors as talented as Peter Carey (and there are only a handful) that I chose to give up: I couldn't possibly hope to capture human life on the page, with all its infinite possibilities, as beautifully, gracefully, amusingly and touchingly as Peter Carey. As Angela Carter writes on the dust jacket of my copy, "It fills me with a wild, savage envy, and no novelist could say fairer than that". I am currently half way through my second reading of Oscar and Lucinda, and I know what is in store for me. I am prepared to sob like a child, and I am relishing it.Set in England and Australia in the nineteenth century, the novel is essentially about the precariousness of existence and how people's lives are constructed by chance. Its essence is perhaps best captured in Oscar's speech to Lucinda on the ship Leviathan: "Our whole faith is a wager...We bet that there is a God. We bet our life on it...We must stake everything on the unprovable fact of His existence". And so they sit down to a game of cards. Objectivity is perhaps an unattainable goal. When I recommend Oscar and Lucinda to my friends, they generally enjoy it. But this is not enough for me. I want them to feel it as keenly as I do - that Carey is an astonishing writer, possessed of an imagination, intelligence, wit and compassion, and the ability to imbue his writing with these qualities, unrivalled by any living author. And that Oscar and Lucinda is a strange, evocative, beautiful, tender novel which will make them laugh and make them cry and make them wish it would never end. I hope this is recommendation enough.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An epic of obsession,
By A Customer
This review is from: Oscar and Lucinda: movie tie-in edition (Vintage International) (Paperback)
Oscar and Lucinda are a pair of unusual characters , both victims of childhood trauma, who share a weakness for gambling and a penchant for obsessions of all kinds. Carey might have created a simple romance here about two misfits who find each other, and on the surface that is indeed what happens; however, the story is far more complex and is peopled with assorted other characters that give the book added richness. Mr. d'Abbs, Mr. Jeffris, the Strattons, Oscar's father, Theophilus, and others serve to demonstrate that we are all subject to our own foibles and obsessions. One of Carey's messages is clearly that none of us is "normal"; that behind the mask we wear for society lurks a mass of insecurities and imperfections. Oscar and Lucinda give each other what they each seem to need, and it is not at all what the reader expects. If this book has a fault, it may lie in the sometimes disjointed method of narration. It can be intrusive. However, the identity of the narrator--not revealed until the end of the novel--is a nifty twist itself. A challenging read that is well worth the effort.
5.0 out of 5 stars
transforms my soul,
By Carrie (Ontario) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Oscar And Lucinda (Paperback)
I've read thousands of books in my lifetime and I would say that Oscar and Lucinda is one of my top five. I'm currently rereading the book for the third time. The writing is beautiful and engaging... sometimes I must put the book down to digest the beauty, complexity, challenge of what I have read. I am in awe of this writer's talent. I care deeply for the characters even though they are frustrating to me at times. I fall in love with glass every time I read the book even though glass means very little to me really. So much more I could say but words can never convey how this book reaches out, grabs and transforms my soul.
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