It is as if, in this novel, Peter Carey has set out to write a traditional, narrative lead novel with two main protagonists but has given himself this task of subverting the reader's expectations. The two don't meet until half-way through the book and then on a boat from the UK to Australia despite Lucinda being from Australia. They are linked by a common interest in gambling but that is not the main theme of the book, except symbollically. The climax of the book seems to me more typical of an Amazonian or Congo setting. I suspect the off-kilter, unsettling nature of the plotting and the characterisation is what makes this book such an enjoyable read. Carey is an excellent writer and is an author who never sells his reader's short. Oscar and Lucinda is a book that is worthy of its many plaudits and awards. ( )

One of the reviews on the back of the book describes this as 'bizzare' and I can't think of a better description. It is also desperately sad as you yearn for an outcome for the main protagonists that just does not appear. I still cannot make up my mind whether this is a work of genius or not. ( )

What an odd book. I don’t mean that the writing is odd - it’s actually very good. The characters are odd, but they are also unique. I don’t think I have encountered any like them before. The plot is also odd - very odd. I don’t want to give anything away, but things do not work out quite the way I expected. Which is probably a good thing.

It’s a historical novel, set in Australia and England in the 1860s. There is a minimal framework where it seems that a modern great-grandchild is actually telling the story. The framework is really only needed for the final twist at the end - and no I won’t reveal what that odd plot twist is - you’ll have to read those 400+ pages to see what it is. ( )

http://www.bostonbibliophile.com/2008... ( )

Oscar Hopkins grew up in southern England in the mid-1800s, under his father’s iron rule. As a teenager he left his father’s house to become an Anglican minister. He was an introverted and backward young man, called “Odd Bod” by his seminary colleagues. Surprisingly, he befriended Ian Wardley-Fish, a bit of a rake who introduced Oscar to betting on horse races. At the same time, Lucinda Leplastrier grew up in Australia, and came into a sizeable inheritance as she approached adulthood. She bought a glass factory and made her way as an independent business woman. She also became involved with a social group that spent considerable time gambling on cards. Returning from a visit to England, Lucinda met Oscar, who was travelling on the same ship, having decided to take the gospel to New South Wales. Eventually these two empty, dysfunctional people discovered their shared addiction to gambling, and a relationship of sorts blossomed. Their addiction took a bizarre turn when Lucinda bet her fortune on Oscar’s ability to transport a church, made completely of glass, to a remote location in the colony. The novel concludes with this adventure and its consequences.

Peter Carey’s Booker prize-winning novel works both as a love story and an adventure set in an untamed part of the world. The characters of Lucinda and Oscar are well-developed, and the “supporting cast” is equally colorful. The plot gets a bit fantastic at times, and I never quite understood the source of attraction between Oscar and Lucinda. Nevertheless, from the very beginning I was caught up in their lives, eager to learn when and how their paths crossed, and even more curious about the story’s conclusion. I found Carey’s other Booker winner, True History of the Kelly Gang, more enjoyable and better written, but would still recommend Oscar and Lucinda as a very worthwhile read. ( )

Booker Prize, 1988

A deserving Booker winner - unlike his "Ned Kelly", which is'nt - and a sterling example of why books will always be better than films. Excellent characters, Dickensian writing, superb story, twist at the end, what more could any reader want from a novel? And it does stick in your head for a while after you put it down. ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/958705.htm...

Supposedly one of the Great Australian Novels. I was engaged by it pleasantly enough, but the eventual tragic ending seemed to me just a little far-fetched. ( )

Oscar Hopkins is a high-strung preacher's kid with hydrophobia and noisy knees. Lucinda Leplastrier is an heiress who impulsively buys a glass factory with the inheritance forced on her by a well-intentioned adviser. When the two finally meet, on board a ship bound for New South Wales, they are bound by their affinity for risk, they both are addicted to gambling, their loneliness, and their awkwardly blossoming (but unexpressed) mutual affection. Their final high-stakes bet--whether a glass church can be transported and constructed "by Easter Sunday" for the benefit of an out-of-the-way congregation and its minister --strains plausibility, and events turn ghastly as Oscar plays out his bid for Lucinda's heart. But the object is not the final results, it is the journey. The stories of Oscar and Lucinda’s lives are filled with poignant detail. Each episode strikes a chord. Through their trials and small triumphs, Oscar and Lucinda come of age to plan their great achievement.

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. ( )

A wonderful piece of writing and an excellent example of utilizing the Victorian style structure and narrative in historical fiction. The story is intriguing and full of those minute details that I love in historical fiction (theological debates, comments on fashion at horse races, glass technology, methods in the natural sciences). Both characters, Oscar and Lucinda, are individually so well developed (and memorable)I was almost disappointed when they met and book moved to focus on their relationship. Highly enjoyable! ( )

A wonderful, evocative novel about an eccentric parson and a prickly heiress, who manage to dance around their true emotions for much of the book; as a reader you want to take them both and shake some sense into them, Carey's writing making them seem like real people who you could touch and feel. Set in Devon and Sydney of the mid-19th century, this is a book full of so many wonderful words, not one out of place - beautiful descriptive prose, fantastically drawn characters (even the minor ones) and a tragic story that sucks you in so you feel outrage that it has ended. Carey writes a Dickenisan story that appeals to modern readers, this is a wonderful, wonderful book - i handed it on to someone else straight away so that they could experience it too. The kind of book you wish everyone could experience ( )

I loved this book...I feel as if I've met two real people (Oscar and Lucinda) rather than two characters in a novel. Peter Carey weaves the tale of these two quirky people, both of whom lost their parents (in one way or anothr) and both of whom are gamblers. They decide to build a glass church and transport it through uncharted, god-less country in Australia as a gift for the local Anglican minister who Lucinda was once friends with.

In spite of the strange people and fantastical nature of the glass church, this is fine writing and a story I became totally absorbed with.

The ending was shocking, not so much because of what happens, but because of the way the writing changes. With the attention to detail and the early lives of the main characters througout the rest of the book, I was expecting a gradual winding up of the plot. But the ending was more like a door slamming shut. And, I was left wanting to know more about what happened to Lucinda..... ( )

At first, I was reluctant to give myself over to this book. From what I knew of plot and characters (glass churches! gambling priests! Australia!) I dreaded another work that confused quirky for interesting, as so many tend to. But after the first page, all of those worries were left behind and I found myself completely engrossed in this novel. What I had assumed would be an airy, light read turned out to be a book that has stuck with me since I read it.

More than that, it was one of the few books that I've read recently that I really could not stop reading; whenever I had a spare moment, I would try to read a few pages. It was as if instead of reading a novel, was being introduced to breathing, living people, an effect accomplished by having the vast majority of the book acting as a build-up for the advertised events with the church; the reader spends less time reading a story of an event and more time being introduced to two people, with all their traumas and fears and joys lain bare for one to see. While in the hands of a lesser artist this inordinate attention to the back-story could misfire badly, Peter Carey time and again proves himself to be a storyteller more than able to carry it off. And more than an excellent story-teller, Carey is an amazing writer, with a prose both crystalline and gorgeous.

But, this is not a perfect book by any means. One of its most noticeable flaws is the treatment of the last episodes of the narrative, which don't so much wind up the story as suddenly cauterize it to a close. This is even more glaring when one compares it with the style and content in the book's early sections (especially when one considers the amount of detail and care evident in the chapters dealing with Oscar's childhood vs. the whirlwind events after his arrival at Boat Harbor).

However, as the title of this review suggests, the real impact of the book is how it stays with the reader. This little book that I thought would help pass the time before going to sleep has instead stuck stubbornly in my mind, and doesn't seem to be willing to go anywhere else soon. ( )

I'm totally shocked to see all these negative reviews as I completely loved this book, cried buckets and so on. It is like a dense, character-rich 19th-c. novel, but more complex in terms of what the characters have to risk, how far outside their ken they have to move according to the baroque circumstances of the plot. I am American so I could be quite wrong but I imagine Australia with its bizarre past as a natural setting for bizarre happenings. Give it a try! Here is one reader at least who found the book so moving that I couldn't bear to see the movie, lest it mess with my internal visualization. Plus Ralph Fiennes seems so totally all wrong for Oscar Hopkins whom I found to be truly one of the most touching characters in literature of the last 20 years or so.

I was assigned to read this for my Contemporary British Literature class, and admittedly, I *hated* it for the first three-quarters of the book or so; the prose was strange and hard to get into, the characters were mostly unsympathetic (Lucinda was the only one who seemed remotely human rather than just a character), and the plot was bizarre and not terribly absorbing. The professor kept telling us to treat it as a postmodern game rather than a story, but I didn't understand what she meant until the last dozen or so chapters, when everything suddenly fell into place and I got what Carey was trying to do; I enjoyed it much more once I understood how Carey was playing with his audience and their preconceived expectations. I don't think I'll read it again, but it's absolutely worth trying once if you feel like going a round with the author; just don't give up too quickly. ( )

I have tried to read this so many times, but I just can't manage it.

The Booker prize judges love Peter Carey - he's won a couple of times, and I never have. I'm not sure if they picked quite the right book here, or for quite the right reasons, but without having read the shortlist let alone the longlist, I'm not in a reasonable position to pass judgement.

Oscar is brought up by a very religious father, and then converts to the other side rather unexpectedly. He devises a system for gambling that makes him rather successful, and ends up going to Australia to found a new church. Lucinda is the girl he ends up falling in love with on the trip over; she too is a gambler, and something of a lost soul.

My biggest problem with "Oscar and Lucinda?" That it is simply too much like reading Dickens, without the pay-off of having read Dickens. My other problems with the book are legion, but other than the Dickens aspect I'll let them lie. At least I've read here a book people will know about, and can boast of having read it. ( )

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. ( )

no spoilers; just synopsis

a) don't see the movie unless you read the book...something gets really lost between the two

b)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. ( )

Fairly dull. A bad religious experience as a kid, leads to later problems, changes of religion, etc. The male character meets a female counterpart, and basically become a pair of gambling wastrels, getting into trouble, having trouble relating to each other and various other issues. Not all that interesting. ( )

A wonderful, evocative novel about an eccentric parson and a prickly heiress, who manage to dance around their true emotions for much of the book; as a reader you want to take them both and shake some sense into them, Carey's writing making them seem like real people who you could touch and feel. Set in Devon and Sydney of the mid-19th century, this is a book full of so many wonderful words, not one out of place - beautiful descriptive prose, fantastically drawn characters (even the minor ones) and a tragic story that sucks you in so you feel outrage that it has ended. Carey writes a Dickenisan story that appeals to modern readers, this is a wonderful, wonderful book - i handed it on to someone else straight away so that they could experience it too. The kind of book you wish everyone could experience ( )