Oscar and Lucinda: movie tie-in edition | 
 enlarge | Author: Peter Carey
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
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Rating:  55 reviews
Sales Rank: 75666
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st Vintage International ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 433
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 1
ISBN: 0679777504
Dewey Decimal Number: 823
EAN: 9780679777502
ASIN: 0679777504
Publication Date: November 11, 1997
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Condition: Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy!
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Amazon.com Review
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.
Product Description
The Booker Prize-winning novel--now a major motion picture from Fox Searchlight Pictures.
This sweeping, irrepressibly inventive novel, is a romance, but a romance of the sort that could only take place in nineteenth-century Australia. For only on that sprawling continent--a haven for misfits of both the animal and human kingdoms--could a nervous Anglican minister who gambles on the instructions of the Divine become allied with a teenaged heiress who buys a glassworks to help liberate her sex. And only the prodigious imagination of Peter Carey could implicate Oscar and Lucinda in a narrative of love and commerce, religion and colonialism, that culminates in a half-mad expedition to transport a glass church across the Outback.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 50 more reviews...
 A fine book September 3, 2008
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.
Wonderful characters; great writing July 2, 2008
It's long, at times it's tedious, but it is a book that remains with you long after the last page. The characters of both Oscar and Lucinda are so well drawn and their interaction is told with such tension that it is painful but with generous splashes of humor that just sparkles. I agree with some of the reviewers who feel the ending somewhat loses steam, but that is very minor. Great writing. If you enjoy a historical love story set in a far away land involving two people who are far from ordinary, try "Oscar and Lucinda."
A complex and exhilirating novel January 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
After reading OSCAR AND LUCINDA, Peter Carey's Booker Prize winning novel, I tried to categorize it in some meaningful way. It's richly detailed prose might be a bit daunting at first, and even though a brief glossary is provided, it may be advisable to have a dictionary at hand to help understand some of the language of mid 18th century Australia and England. One category that comes to mind is the historical novel. OSCAR AND LUCINDA works very well on that level, and gives us insight into the economic, cultural, and religious milieus of the period.
Another category is the psychological portrait. Carey does a splendid job exploring the minds of the 2 main characters, both fatally flawed, but passionate in what they believe. It is a novel about the interplay of obsession, compulsion, and passion, and how explosive a mixture it can become under the right and wrong conditions.
Finally, and most importantly, OSCAR AND LUCINDA is a grand farce. This may seem to contradict the historical and psychological aspects, but it still holds true that even the most horrendous and gut wrenching circumstance is delivered with a light, humorous, at times outright hysterical touch. Anyone who fails to see the comedy in this novel is not doing it justice.
Carey should be applauded for this masterful, high wire, juggling act of a novel.
astonishingly good! November 1, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Oscar Hopkins is the red-haired, idealistic, hydrophobic, mantis-like son of a preacher from England. Lucinda Leplastrier is a beautiful, Australian feminist heiress who owns glass works. They are like two poles of opposite charge, completely different, yet attracting each other. There is only one thing they seem to have in common: the addiction to gambling.
Their meeting happens against all odds: Oscar, after running away from his father, Teophilus, is raised by an Anglican family and receives education in Oxford. While in Oxford, he studies theology, but at the same time discovers a passion for betting on horses and wins considerable sums. To avoid a scandal, he agrees to take a post of a vicar in Australia and undertakes a long sea journey to get there, despite his fear of water.
Lucinda happens to be on the same ship, coming back to her native Australia after a visit in England. She is determined to make her glass factory work and thinks about the obstacles she meets all the time, mainly because of men not used to having a female boss and (even less) to exchanging ideas with a headstrong woman (despite finding Lucinda an attractive companion). Lucinda loves all kinds of gambling and even during the journey she cannot refrain from dreams of playing cards...
When Lucinda sees Oscar aboard the ship, he makes an unforgettable impression on her. So when they meet again, another scandal is inevitable. When Oscar is totally ruined and Lucinda's reputation would ruin her too, if not for her fortune, they decide to build the glass church, which Oscar is supposed to deliver through the bush, traveling with abominable Mr. Jeffris. The ending is even more surprising than the whole story...
I do not want to reveal any of the events that Carey's imagination created. This novel delves into the unexpected, the plot is great and the small anecdotic sub-stories and digressions excellent. Every secondary character is vivid and no person or event is introduced unnecessarily, even if it seems so at the first glance.
The prose is dense, rich and evoking powerful imagery in the mind of the reader. The novel is complex and requires a great deal of concentration. For me it was a slow, but delicious read. Oscar and Lucinda are undoubtedly among the weirdest literary characters ever created, yet they are full of life. They are interesting, unique and thoroughly human, not ideal, but very likeable. All the characters are full of human flaws, many are even caricatures (Mr. Jeffris, Miriam Chadwick and others), repulsive and pathetic; some are good but weak; some are plain ridiculous; there is a whole spectrum of human natures. Peter Carey wrote a great love story, a powerful epic and a great character study- a masterpiece. He is definitely one of the top Australian writers.
Gambling and Love April 13, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This has got to be in my top five books i have ever read.
Set in 19th century Australia, Lucinda is confident and assertive. In contrast, Oscar is mild mannered and nervous. Together they form a friendhip that begins with a love for gambling but develops into something much deeper.
This story is beautifully written, Carey conjures up wonderful imagery of early Australian life, both in the outback and the city. The characters
are magical.
Absolutely supurb
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