This month's choice, Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda, was never going to be a popular one. 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. Yet even the unconvincing plot turns are made up for by Carey's rich prose and the tale's unpredictable outcome. 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. 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. 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. Neither of these coming-of-age stories quite explains how the grownup Oscar and Lucinda each develop a guilty passion for gambling. "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. 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. 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. Lucinda Leplastrier is a frizzy-haired heiress who impulsively buys a glass factory with the inheritance forced on her by a well-intentioned adviser. The novel partly takes its inspiration from Father and Son, the autobiography of the English poet Edmund Gosse, which describes his relationship with his father, Philip Henry Gosse.Oscar Hopkins is a high-strung preacher's kid with hydrophobia and noisy knees.
This bet changes both their lives forever. Lucinda bets Oscar that he cannot transport a glass church from Sydney to a remote settlement at Bellingen, some 400 km up the New South Wales coast. They meet on the ship over to Australia, and discover that they are both gamblers, one obsessive, the other compulsive. The book tells the story of Oscar Hopkins, the Devonian son of a Plymouth Brethren minister who becomes an Anglican priest, and Lucinda Leplastrier, a young Australian heiress who buys a glass factory. It was shortlisted for The Best of the Booker. Oscar and Lucinda is a novel by Australian author Peter Carey which won the 1988 Booker Prize and the 1989 Miles Franklin Award.
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