What do You think about Oscar And Lucinda (1998)?
3. What a wonderful novel. I'd forgotten all the story's intricate plot and about how Carey creates an Australian universe of characters with secret agendas and shames. It has gambling, religion, repression, and love. If you're looking for a good "book from every continent" book, this might be the one for you.2. I want to reread more books this year. Less chasing of new things while still remaining current, but slowing down and experiencing books I said I loved to see if I still do.1. I read this around the time it came out. I found a family copy of the book to re-read, but the cheap paper makes my sinuses hurt too much, so I'm buying a U.K. edition and will read it again. I remember loving it so much, so I want to experience the whole thing again.
—Sonya
I didn't read any reviews until I was more than halfway through the book, so I knew by then that the event most of them here mention - the wager on the glass church - is not at the centre of the story. If I had been reading Oscar & Lucinda waiting for that I most certainly would have been disappointed. I WAS disappointed when I saw that many (most) reviewers on Goodreads gave great reviews to the book... because I'm deeply ambivalent about Oscar & Lucinda, which I WANTED to like much more than I did.I have really mixed feelings towards Peter Carey's. When I first started it, I professed loudly and clearly to everyone that would listen that I didn't enjoy the story, or connect with any of the characters or even like the way it was written. Yet, I didn't have any trouble finishing it - in fact, I found it incredibly easy, sometimes exquistely beautiful, to read.The main problem was that I found that I didn't connect with the characters until three quarters into the book, by which point I was a bit exhausted from dragging myself through their lives without any real interest. This was especially the case at the beginning of the novel. Another aspect that held me back was the story: The beginning is very slow, and felt like it focused on setting the child-Oscar and child-Lucinda very firmly in place and time and then throwing up events that would shape them into the adults they became. Throughout the story the chapters jump here and there to tangents in the story or minor characters. Every single character (and to me, they felt too much like characters in a book rather than real people), even some of the most marginal ones, has his or her own particular eccentricity or individual quirk that requires a backstory to explain how events in their history shaped them (which only served to distance me further from them). All these events from the beginning and the characters essentially shape the ending, and its very clever of Carey to tie everything in, but at the beginning I didn't care and by the end it all seemed too cleverly constructed to shape Oscar and Lucinda's characters in a certain way and lead them to that point.In the end, I know what I didn't like about the novel, but I can't figure out what it is that I did like. I found it incredibly easy to read and beautifully, occasionally poetically worded - but at times that came with a sense of frustration too. At about the three quarter mark I found that I really did like and care about the characters - although that feeling came and went as the story progressed. So I'm still not sure... If nothing else, I found it nice to read something set in Australia (even if it was set in an Australia over 100 years in the past), which I rarely do these days.
—Ruby
no spoilers; just synopsisa) don't see the movie unless you read the book...something gets really lost between the twob)Excellent, simply excellent!!! I would recommend this book to anyone who appreciates superlative writing and a quirky story. If every book were like this one, I would be in Heaven!!!! The prose is outstanding and these characters are simply so real I thought they'd float off the page.Oscar and Lucinda is set both in England and in Australia in the 19th century. In England, Oscar Hopkins is the son of a non-Anglican, religious fundamentalist who is also a naturalist, and up until he is about 15 Oscar grows up with the reassurance that he is among the saved. Oscar's mother died; he lives with his father in a little village called Hennacombe in Devon, in an austere house with no ornamentation; even the food is plain. One Christmas one of the cooks feels sorry for the boy and makes him a Christmas pudding, complete with raisins & a cherry; the ostentatiousness of the pudding leads Theophilus (Oscar's father) to lose it and he hits Oscar, who is then forced to cough up the pudding. Later, they are out wading in the ocean, and Oscar asks that God smite his father out of anger; just then, Theophilus has an accident that cuts him on the leg. Oscar realizes that he has to leave -- and the signs point to the Anglican Church. We next find him at Oxford, at Oriel College, where he discovers gambling. One thing leads to another and Oscar sets out to become a missionary in New South Wales but he has to go by ship...a problem since Oscar has this immense water phobia. It is on this voyage that Oscar meets Lucinda Leplastrier, returning to Australia, whose parents had died & whose mother, before dying, had their land subdivided and sold and Lucinda was now an heiress living off the profits. She is also the owner of a glassworks in Australia. Lucinda is obstinate, headstrong & like Oscar, she is a gambler. The lives of these two people come together on the ship, then meet again after Oscar discovers that there is no Missionary Work to be done in New South Wales, and that he is to be assigned to a posh vicarage instead. He meets Lucinda in a Chinese gambling house ... and things take off from there. I won't say another word... you really should read it for yourself.The writing is excellent; the story is excellent and there are so many themes that are explored without the author ever losing track. My only complaint: the end came so fast (it was a great ending but rushed) that after having savored the story for so long I felt cheated. However, the rest of the book was absolutely stunning and so rich so I can overlook this.Please try this book...I can totally see how it won a Booker.
—Nancy Oakes
