Inanimate objects become alive: houses, buildings, modes of transport, whole countries – all of these are characters in the story. It’s everywhere and makes the novel worthy of a second, more patient, reading. The detail isn’t, as with Tolstoy or Hardy, in verbose descriptions of scenes or the human soul. This book is not short and yet Carey writes with an astonishing level of detail. When the two eventually meet, it is gambling which cements their friendship and the greatest bet of all which is the consummation of their love.

Lucinda gambles because she has the money to burn and because she finds it evokes preternatural tendencies she can barely resist. He gambles, he believes, because God has instructed him to so that he can fulfil God’s plan. Although this hardship has quite a different effect on moulding the two of their characters, they both struggle with a passion which they carry as a dark secret: gambling.įor Oscar, this is at once the basis for faith and yet its crisis. Both lose parents at a young age and both find themselves unacceptable to their surrounding societies. Set in the mid 19th-century, Oscar is born to a fundamentalist minister in rural Cornwall, England, Lucinda to immigrant parents in Australia. While very beautifully evoking the themes of love and society, this is also a story of something I’m very familiar with: the struggle to overcome our fallen nature while trusting in a God who accepts that we cannot. Carey writes with great insight into the vivid characters he has created and his use of metaphor is always insightful. This was a wonderful book from start to finish. Book #205 Reviewer: Arukiyomi ( first published May 2012)

Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey