Oscar and Lucinda

By: Peter Carey

Narrated by: Steven Crossley

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 audiobook, 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 develops 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 onboard 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.

©1988 Peter Carey (P)2015 Recorded Books

excellent read!

this is my first time reading Carey and it was a roller coaster I'd ride again and again. What an adventure!

Good Yarn

I am a pretty serious Peter Carey fan so I was eager to see what many critics think his best book would be like. I loved the True History of the Kelley Gang, was disappointed and confused by Parrot and Olivier in America and enchanted by My Life as A Fake. I'm sorry I was led to believe Oscar and Lucinda would somehow rise above these because then I could have appreciated it for what it is, which is pretty good. It is another historical yarn--not a romance even though it has a love story at its centre--built around two flawed, unlikeable characters--one a stiff-necked puritan man and the other a wilful, independent woman--who combine to create a scandalous, eccentric legend in colonial Australia. It was fine, but it went on too long about Oscar's ridiculous trials of conscience, Lucinda's unlikely feminism and meanwhile abandoned its one amusing character, the scoundrely Fish. Still, a good thumping read.

peter carey writes delicious prose

Worth it, loved, it, awesome storytelling and well read. this is one of my favs!

Utterly compelling, and odd!

This unusually well written book has metaphors and similes of great depth, beauty and originality. They dress up this story like Christmas baubles bedeck a tree. It was only the denouement that was entirely unexpected, and completely changed the meaning of the story. Bravo!

Reminiscent of Charles Dickens

A range of characters, a range of tones, all set in a compelling historic context.