Rating: 
Summary: An epic of obsession
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: People in Glass Houses
Review: Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda is a historical journey into the experience of coming of age within a developing nation. The two main characters find this out within the progression of time. Oscar Hopkins is the son of puritan, harassed and harangued by his father to follow his faith. Oscar becomes more and more anxious about puritanism and his father and hides out in the yard of the Anglican priest. From there his life is changed forever.
Linda Leplastrier is a repressed free spirit, who after her mother dies discovers gambling via friendly card games. It is this pursuit that leads her to a friendship with Oscar.
The book is very good, well written and keeps you interested, my only problem is that it is a little flat in parts; this only happens occasionally however and the result is an excellent story. There is a great metaphor in the book of the crystal church; life is like a glasshouse, you can look out and others can see in. Your house/self can easily be broken, shattered or destroyed. I truly enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it for lovers of colonial history, who enjoy a very well written and researched story.
Rating:
Summary: Gambling with glass
Review: To say "Oscar and Lucinda" is a novel about a wayward Anglican clergyman and a rich young lady in Australia in the 1860s may give the impression of its being merely a historical set piece, but it transcends this description through the originality of its plot, the depth of its characters, the sublime subtlety of its humor, and an almost Joycean narrative. Peter Carey's novel achieves its distinction through the intrigue of its premise, which is that the respective backgrounds of the two protagonists are so dissimilar that only a random act of fate could eventually unite them, and only one thing they have in common could keep them together -- they are both compulsive gamblers. Gambling indeed sends Oscar Hopkins and Lucinda Leplastrier spiraling towards destruction, but in a way that is unexpectedly foolhardy even by the conventions of the addiction. The story begins by showing Oscar growing up in a provincial English village where he is sheltered by his widowed father, a naturalist and Christian fundamentalist who adheres to an ascetic lifestyle and distrusts the Anglican church. Oscar, after receiving a divination that he should devote his life to the Anglican faith, leaves his home and goes to live with a local Anglican minister, the Reverend Hugh Stratton, and eventually attends Oxford, where his friend Ian Wardley-Fish introduces him to racetrack betting, of which Stratton would sternly disapprove. After becoming an Anglican minister, Oscar offers to go to Australia as a missionary, even though gambling has become his most lucrative source of income. Meanwhile, Lucinda, a girl who moved from England to New South Wales with her parents, was orphaned as a teenager and was bequeathed a considerable fortune with which she decides to buy a glassworks in Sydney, not because she has an interest in the manufacture of glass, but because she pities the working class and thinks her ownership of the factory will allow her to associate with Dennis Hasset, a vicar and glass expert to whom she is attracted. After visiting family friends in England (one of whom is Marian Evans, a.k.a. George Eliot, who is unimpressed with her), she embarks on the return journey to Australia, and it is on the ship that she meets Oscar and discovers they have a common weakness for cards. The novel demonstrates that it is very difficult for a gambling addict to maintain a career in the clergy, and in Oscar's case financial ruin compels him to lodge with Lucinda, which is an obviously controversial situation under the consideration that they are not married. She dreams romantically of constructing a crystal palace of steel and glass, and Oscar, seeing a model at the glassworks, proposes a real glass church to be donated to Hasset, who now has a vicarage in a distant part of the country. This leads Oscar to wager a colossal final bet with Lucinda -- that he can transport this church, in sections to be assembled near the site, across land and sea, as a surprise gift to Hasset. The story is narrated by Oscar's great-grandson, who remains anonymous and pleasantly unobtrusive throughout, and therefore even though the setting is the nineteenth century the mode of narration is thoroughly modern, with the relatively short chapters giving the novel a strong narrative dynamic and a fast pace; this is not a pastiche of the Victorian style. The image of the glass cathedral at the end is quite striking, not because it is a thing of beauty but because it strives to be a thing of beauty despite its fractured appearance resulting from its tumultuous passage and the death and violence which it has caused and which taint its pretensions to innocence and beatitude. This unique combination of the sacred and the profane makes "Oscar and Lucinda" a work of excellence, clearly one of the best novels of the 1980s.
Rating:
Summary: Gambling with glass
Review: To say "Oscar and Lucinda" is a novel about a wayward Anglican clergyman and a rich young lady in Australia in the 1860s may give the impression of its being merely a historical set piece, but it transcends this description through the originality of its plot, the depth of its characters, the sublime subtlety of its humor, and an almost Joycean narrative. Peter Carey's novel achieves its distinction through the intrigue of its premise, which is that the respective backgrounds of the two protagonists are so dissimilar that only a random act of fate could eventually unite them, and only one thing they have in common could keep them together -- they are both compulsive gamblers. Gambling indeed sends Oscar Hopkins and Lucinda Leplastrier spiraling towards destruction, but in a way that is unexpectedly foolhardy even by the conventions of the addiction. The story begins by showing Oscar growing up in a provincial English village where he is sheltered by his widowed father, a naturalist and Christian fundamentalist who adheres to an ascetic lifestyle and distrusts the Anglican church. Oscar, after receiving a divination that he should devote his life to the Anglican faith, leaves his home and goes to live with a local Anglican minister, the Reverend Hugh Stratton, and eventually attends Oxford, where his friend Ian Wardley-Fish introduces him to racetrack betting, of which Stratton would sternly disapprove. After becoming an Anglican minister, Oscar offers to go to Australia as a missionary, even though gambling has become his most lucrative source of income. Meanwhile, Lucinda, a girl who moved from England to New South Wales with her parents, was orphaned as a teenager and was bequeathed a considerable fortune with which she decides to buy a glassworks in Sydney, not because she has an interest in the manufacture of glass, but because she pities the working class and thinks her ownership of the factory will allow her to associate with Dennis Hasset, a vicar and glass expert to whom she is attracted. After visiting family friends in England (one of whom is Marian Evans, a.k.a. George Eliot, who is unimpressed with her), she embarks on the return journey to Australia, and it is on the ship that she meets Oscar and discovers they have a common weakness for cards. The novel demonstrates that it is very difficult for a gambling addict to maintain a career in the clergy, and in Oscar's case financial ruin compels him to lodge with Lucinda, which is an obviously controversial situation under the consideration that they are not married. She dreams romantically of constructing a crystal palace of steel and glass, and Oscar, seeing a model at the glassworks, proposes a real glass church to be donated to Hasset, who now has a vicarage in a distant part of the country. This leads Oscar to wager a colossal final bet with Lucinda -- that he can transport this church, in sections to be assembled near the site, across land and sea, as a surprise gift to Hasset. The story is narrated by Oscar's great-grandson, who remains anonymous and pleasantly unobtrusive throughout, and therefore even though the setting is the nineteenth century the mode of narration is thoroughly modern, with the relatively short chapters giving the novel a strong narrative dynamic and a fast pace; this is not a pastiche of the Victorian style. The image of the glass cathedral at the end is quite striking, not because it is a thing of beauty but because it strives to be a thing of beauty despite its fractured appearance resulting from its tumultuous passage and the death and violence which it has caused and which taint its pretensions to innocence and beatitude. This unique combination of the sacred and the profane makes "Oscar and Lucinda" a work of excellence, clearly one of the best novels of the 1980s.
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