Rating: 
Summary: A magnificent obsession, a beautiful relationship
Review: 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
Rating: 
Summary: beautiful
Review: Framed by recent reminiscences of an unhappy family, Oscar & Lucinda tells the story of two very unusual characters. Unlike many historical novels, it is not dull, it is not an excuse to describe pretty dresses, and it does not dwell upon the unkind living conditions with which people were faced in Days Of Yore. Oscar and Lucinda are misfits of the highest order. An early epiphany causes Oscar to run away from his puritanical father at an early age, seeking anglican enlightenment with the local preacher. Lucinda is kept from society by her mother, a fiercely political woman with strong ideas about feminism and socialism, an oddity in the victorian era. She outfits her daughter according to the principles of rational dress, and believes in the moral value of factories. Lucinda is led to gambling by loneliness born of her outsider status: it is only amongst outsiders that she can relax. Oscar was told to gamble in a vision from god. Each a rebel in his own right, they are drawn together even when circumstances pull them apart. Two addicts with a shared obsession, their interactioins crackle with the energy of a ricocheted bullet. Their union is embodied in the Prince Rupert Drop: "a solid teardrop of glass no more than two inches from head to tail... Although it is strong enough to withstand the sledgehammer, the tail can be nipped with a pair of blunt-nosed pliers. It takes a little effort. And once it is done it is as if you have taken out the keystone, removed the linchpin, kicked out the foundations. The whole thing explodes." This object, impossible to create except by chance, is the key to the novel. Glass and water appear throughout the novel, their contradictory natures of force and fragility, purity and sin, the core and downfall of both protagonists. This dual nature is also mirrored in the context of Australia's colonial wilderness with Sydney's pretensions to class and modernisation, the new world with the old. A brilliant and passionate novel whose personae breathe with desire and shame.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully powerful...
Review: I am hard-pressed to remember two more strange protagonists in all of literature than Oscar and Lucinda. That they meet, fall in love and make a bet on 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 is even more absurd. Yet, page after page, I read, absorbing the wonderful and vibrant detail of mid-nineteenth century England and Australia. Only in the world of this novel could these two characters be "perfect" for each other. And in being written, this book issues a challenge to this world to accept that which is odd and unconventional, that which is outside societal and religious standards. Somehow I am reminded of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice; the interplay between Oscar and Lucinda amongst "strict society" strikes the same chord as that struck in the love story of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, a man and a woman outside the "norm." This book is wonderful reading to get lost in.
Rating:
Summary: Absurd and delightful
Review: I can understand why people may give up on this book but alas! Do continue, for the time you devote will pay off spectacularly. It took me a few attempts to finish reading this novel; Carey's intensly descriptive attention to detail takes some getting used to. However, by the time I had really 'got into it' my personal dedication to the characters had become great and I became engrossed by the two protagonists: Oscar and Lucinda. The short and neatly contained chapters act almost as stories in themselves and within these small bursts of narrative subtly emerges an outline of the harsh reality of a nation in its infancy. Like the English in an unsympathetic Australian climate we see two peculiars, a square peg and an odd bod, raging and scurrying through the expectations of society. Nothing prepered me for the impact this book had on me and its dramatic ending shook me to the core. The story and its protagonists are absurd and obscure, intense and strangely romantic but moreover; utterly delightful.
Rating:
Summary: Absurd and delightful
Review: I can understand why people may give up on this book but alas! Do continue, for the time you devote will pay off spectacularly. It took me a few attempts to finish reading this novel; Carey's intensly descriptive attention to detail takes some getting used to. However, by the time I had really 'got into it' my personal dedication to the characters had become great and I became engrossed by the two protagonists: Oscar and Lucinda. The short and neatly contained chapters act almost as stories in themselves and within these small bursts of narrative subtly emerges an outline of the harsh reality of a nation in its infancy. Like the English in an unsympathetic Australian climate we see two peculiars, a square peg and an odd bod, raging and scurrying through the expectations of society. Nothing prepered me for the impact this book had on me and its dramatic ending shook me to the core. The story and its protagonists are absurd and obscure, intense and strangely romantic but moreover; utterly delightful.
Rating:
Summary: My First Australian Book
Review: I had seen the movie some years ago and I loved it quite a lot. That's what brought me to the book. All in all I would say it is a very good book, and I was quite glad to see that Carey did not fall into some cliché romance thing, and instead created an incredibly powerful element in lieu of it. It is a long book, however, it is divided in rather short chapters, which gives it a certain dynamic that can be much enjoyed. For instance, it tends to give the whole thing a quicker pace despite the length of the novel. The two main characters are absolutely great; I loved them in the movie and they're just as great in the novel. My recommendation is that if you have seen the movie and liked it you should like the book as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Frustrating and not truly rewarding (spoilers ahead)
Review: I read Oscar and Lucinda expecting it to be a romance, which may expalin why I was frustrated and disappointed by it. It is not a romance, or if it is, it is a deeply unsatisfying one, for it breaks the cardinal rule of all romances - a love story, if it doesn't end well, must end tragically. The love story between Oscar Hopkins and Lucinds Leplastrier ends stupidly, and I find that unforgivable. The story is told by a descendant of Oscar's, a gimmick that serves no purpose except to let us know, before the title characters even meet, that they will not end up together. But this knowledge does nothing but aggravate, as the reader is left to watch two people spiral around and away from each other for no reason other than their own silly shyness (towards the end Carey plays the unforgivable trick of making the reader believe, for about two paragraphs, that he may have found a loophole that allows the title characters to be together, but this hope is soon dashed.) Lucinda, who to me was the more compelling of the two main characters, is dismissed in half a line, and although this might make sense given that it is the story of Oscar's descendant, it still feels like a betrayal of the character. As if, having left her in a terrible lurch, Carey simply couldn't care enough to show us at least how she managed to find the strengh to pick up her life and start again. Hardly an appropriate ending considering Lucinda's name is in the title as well. But even ignoring my disappointed bias, there are other things that bothered me about Carey's book. Evey single character is a mass of eccentricities, and this streches crdibility and whatever sympathy the reader might feel inclined to give them. Very few characters ever speak plainly and say exactly what they feel, and when they do it is such a relief, as if the dozens of pages spent watching people bounce off each other like blind mice, misunderstanding everything they see and hear had literally twisted your guts into a knot. Even the main characters, who have a right to be eccentric, tax one's patience and make you wonder if people could really be that oblivious to the world around them. That having been said, there are a few characters whose humanity manages to shine through the grime of their mannerisms, such as Hugh Stratton and Oscar's friend Wardley-Fish, or even the closest thing the book has to a villains, the self-proclaimed Captain Jeffris and Miriam Chadwyck. I actually felt I could understand these characters, and their predicaments made me feel for them (or against them as the case may be.) Carey's writing is crisp and engaging, and certain set pieces are very evoactive and moving, but ultimately, the story amounts to nothing more than a beautiful car crash in slow motion, and, like a car crash, seems to have happened for no purpose. As I said in the beginning of my review, I was expecting a romance, and most of my frustration stems from the occasional peeks of the romance that might have been, so another reader with no expectations might enjoy the book more than I did. Either way it seems obvious that this book held me in it's grip, and for that, even though it wasn't a very pleasant grip, it deserves three stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Sounds Familiar?
Review: I read this book for a class, and at first it seemed to be a pretty good read. Very quickly, however, it spirals downward into a hole from which it never really escapes. Toward the middle the pace slows down so much you almost lose track of the story. To be totally honest, it bears striking similarity to William Gaddis' book "The Recognitions". The only difference is "Recognitions" is a spectacular book, while Carey's "Oscar and Lucinda" is mediocre at best. I found so many similarities, in fact, I can't help but wonder in Carey used it as a framework for this novel.
I'm sure that the post-colonial twinge within the story will engage many readers, but I couldn't find any redeeming factors to make me change my mind (I often found myself saying, "I get it! They like to gamble alot! Enough!"). If you're into romance and you want a good saturday morning read, this book shouldn't disappoint. If you want good fiction, though, I would skip this one. I wanted to like it, but I don't. Just my opinion.
Rating:
Summary: Miraculous story telling underpinned by humour and sympathy
Review: I think the first thing to say about O & L, which I must admit is one of my favourite novels, is that it is story telling of the highest order. Read it, and then ask yourself: how on earth did the author think up all the characters and events? Examples. The bishop doing the table-cloth trick. The events and characters of Lucinda's gambling evenings. The phosphorescence on the boat. The hopscotch. The novel is an extraordinary kalaedoscope of shifting colours, all held together with a ruthless, if merciless, logic. Carey moves effortlessly from rural Devon through Oxford to the nineteenth century Australian outback, throwing in references to glass manufacture, the Oxford Movement, marine biology and an infinity of other topics. Resonances connect all the disparity together: the tragic misunderstandings of love, the brittleness and beauty of glass; the ambiguous and moving relationship between Oscar and his father; the inscrutability of Lucinda (what does she really think?). And of course, the rich and inventive humour that enlivens every page. This is a book about love: its perversion into obsession, its destructiveness, its strength, and its ultimate futility; and the place of love in religion, seen in negative and positive. And despite Carey's distance from his subject (he writes in an ironic detached tone), does any reader really doubt where his sympathies really lie? (for an example of a book where the author *really* doesn't care, try The Magus by John Fowles). For example, is Oscar's father the villain of the piece, or Hugh Stratton? Or is it the mass of characters - from Mr Fig to Jeffries through to the dogooders of Sydney - who display the sluggish and lazy attitudes of the damned. The christmas pudding incident is based on the life of Edmund Gosse (Father and Son, E. Gosse), and readers may be interested in chasing up the real Philip Gosse - the model for Oscar's father - in Glimpses of the Wonderful: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse by Ann Thwaite.
Rating:
Summary: Few Quick Comments
Review: On the back of my copy of the book was a quote by someone saying they felt a "savage envy" of Carey's writing ability, and I had a similar sentiment up until about three quarters through the book.
But I felt the ending was rushed. The empathy with the characters that had been built up during the novel was carelessly thrown away. The whole ending left me with a dull sensation. Also, I didn't feel it was a romantic novel, as it is often described. Lucinda becoming involved in the labour movement, and the portrayal of the killing of the Aborigines in particular, which I understood to be one of the key reasons for the end of the novel, didn't have enough background to evoke emotion.
I felt nothing towards any of the Christian denominations from reading the book, as apparently was one of the aims (but perhaps this is not what Carey intended, only what others say). Quite liked both Oscar and Lucinda as characters though. At no stage did I consider it to be a story trying to be realistic. The prose was lovely to begin with, but I tired of it, as though it was a sweet I had too much of.
Just by the by, I thought that at one point the book mentioned that Lucinda would be destitute within 2 years, and that the current year was 1859. But then, Oscar did not depart aboard the Leviathan until 1862 or 1863 I'm sure, much after the time Lucinda was supposed to be destitute. I'll have to look it up.
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