Rating: 
Summary: A Personal Tragedy with an epic setting
Review: Appreciating this book is a very personal experience. A friend read it and commented that it was a bit 'soppy and pretentious'. However I find that the characters are entirely believable and intricately drawn. The subtlety of 'Oscar and Lucinda' is the fact that their circumstances are entirely of their own making and yet it seems that some inextricable force conspires to force the protagonists along a predefined path rather like a Shakespearean tragedy. The setting is epic spanning England and Australia but the characters are the main focus of the novel, which makes the story more poignant and personal. The only aspect of this novel that I dislike is the fact that it has to end.
Rating:
Summary: Edmund Gosse in Australia?
Review: I first picked this up because I had just completed a re-reading of Carey's marvellous BLISS, which, as usual, left me wanting more. What I found in OSCAR AND LUCINDA surprised me; Carey is as much at home in the Victorian period as he is in his painfully funny commentaries on modern life. He also, in this book, appeared to perhaps have Edmund Gosse on the brain.
If you do not know Edmund Gosse (and unless you are a student in a college course on something like "Growing Up Victorian" it is likely that you do not, nowadays, though you might find a remark or two about him in biographies of some of his contemporaries like Swinburne), I would refer you to his opus FATHER AND SON, which treats on his childhood and early manhood with his father, an evangelical puritan who was also a famous naturalist. Those of you who have already given OSCAR AND LUCINDA a look will already follow me here, for the descriptions of Oscar's own childhood could have been torn straight from the pages of FATHER AND SON. Oscar, like Gosse, loses his mother at a tender age and is left to the ministrations (in every sense of the word) of his father, who in addition to being the leader of the local Plymouth Bretheren is a naturalist of some repute. Holidays being just like any other day to the Bretheren, Oscar and his father spend Christmas Day waste deep in the cold ocean, gathering specimens for the father's work. Carey does an absolutely beautiful job of evoking the pain of the rift between the two generations that opens on this particular Christmas, in some ways producing a finer, clearer picture of this than Gosse himself did. Carey then gives his protagonist a completely different destiny from Gosse's; Gosse became something of a literary gossip, a writer of biographies and friend (or kibbitzer) to many of the literary figures of his day. Oscar, however, becomes an even greater horror to his puritanical father: an Anglican clergyman. He also removes himself to a far greater physical distance from his father than Gosse did: Australia. Oscar's subsequent adventures with a young heiress in a frontier town, a glassworks, and across the bush transporting an entire church made of glass, are nothing at all like Gosse's life in fact, but in tone Oscar is still very much the man Gosse might have become had he not fallen in love with the written word. Oscar falls in love instead with gambling and with Lucinda.
Of additional note is the constantly recurring image of Prince Rupert's drops, odd accidental byproducts of glassmaking which, in their beauty, amazing strength, and incredible fragility when their weak spots are found perfectly capture the characters of both Oscar and his typically tough-but-vulnerable Australian feminist partner. Carey's evocation of the wonder and the sadness inherent in these rare objects can bring some readers to cry right along with Lucinda when she first learns of them. It is her passion for these that leads her to seek to become a glassmaker herself, and it is now a passion of my own to one day see one of these.
OSCAR AND LUCINDA is therefore more than just the "love story" as which most blurb specialists and other such types have chosen to categorize it. Should you pick it up, reading Edmund Gosse's FATHER AND SON alongside it will greatly add to its charm and your amusement. Both are widely available and are highly recommended.
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: Love the writer, hate the characters?
Review: First off, let me just say that Peter Carey is an amazing writer. This novel deserved the Booker prize.
Carey's writting style is gorgeous. He describes the landscape of Australia so beautifully you want to go there. After reading this book I couldn't get enought of Australia, and immediately read everything else about the country that I could lay my hands on.
As for the characters....
I found it impossible to like either Oscar or Lucinda. I did not symapthize or identify with them, and I found them both to be quite grating. This is the only reason I took off a star in the rating. As a whole the book is so well written, and the plot so well crafted that I not only read the book, but thoroughly enjoyed it, despite the two main characters. That is the genius of Peter Carey! (For a real trip read "The True History of the Kelly Gang!)
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.
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: 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: 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: 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: 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.
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