Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

I am in slight disbelief in seeing this book along with ‘The Ghost Road’ on the 2008 Best of the Bookers shortlist.  And doing some research, as I feel obliged to do when I read a Booker that not only doesn’t seem to be up to the general standard, but I have actively come to dislike, I was surprised to find that this is generally a very popular love story.

Suffice to say I did not feel the love; in fact I was incredibly glad to finish this one!  Initially it was taking me a little while to get through, as it had not managed to hook me with its characters or story.  So I decided I would give it a good go and try to immerse myself in its pages, but unfortunately this resulted in my feeling rather disgruntled for two days.  This could have been just a coincidence - I may have been bad-tempered regardless of the book, but I’ve got to say my lasting impression of ‘Oscar and Lucinda’, the first of two Booker winning novels for author Peter Carey, is one of annoyance.  Annoyance with the characters, the story, the setting, the writing…it was all rather unsatisfying.

The characters’ inner dialogues, although initially insightful and beneficial for character development, soon became rambling, especially when going off on a tangent into the lives of minor characters.  The descriptions were interminable and dreary, almost trying to be Dickensian in their depth but failing miserably with none of the balance of light and dark executed by Dickens.  The story was a bit ridiculous with such setups and repetition of scenarios and dilemmas that it dragged.  I felt so exasperated by the characters and their predicaments, that I wanted to shout at them and make them all see sense and move on.

On a more positive note, the story does convey the frustrations of being a women in a man’s world of industry before equal opportunities, as Lucinda, left with a large fortune, purchases a glass factory and despite her financial might does not fit in.  Moreover, the impatience I felt with the characters was in part a result of social niceties stifling interactions and ultimately resulting in a preposterous journey that the hero ends up making into New South Wales.  With a church made out of glass in tow to prove his love, everything, despite the best intentions, worked out for the worst.  Although I can appreciate the book’s insight into how chance versus destiny can shape lives there is such over-emphasis of this theme that it also becomes dull and ironically rather predicable. The characters demonstrate the weaknesses of humans which contrast with the high expectations derived from society and religion, but it does it all so heavy-handedly with no finesse that it leaves one feeling hopeless and irritated.