Oscar and Lucinda - Softcover

Carey, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571322840 ISBN 13: 9780571322848

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2015

Synopsis

On a slow ship bound for Australia, two gamblers find distraction and solace in a deck of cards. One, Oscar Hopkins, who believes God encourages him to gamble; the other, Lucinda Leplastrier, who is the heiress of a fortune and owner of a glassworks. Together they will make a bet which will change both of their lives forever.

Peter Carey is one of the only writers to have twice won the Booker Prize - Oscar and Lucinda was his first book to do so. Both a moving love story and a historical tour de force, his tale of nineteenth-century Australia signaled the arrival of one of the great voices in contemporary literature.

About this title

Review:

Ralph Fiennes, who stars in the film version of Oscar and Lucinda, reads a nicely abridged version of Peter Carey's Booker Prize-winning novel. The audio captures much of the book's vibrant prose, delicately eliminating minor characters and digressions. Lucinda's sudden appearance in London is even more abrupt and confusing than in the book, but Fiennes's carefully clipped British pronunciation helps make things clearer. Not only is he a better actor on tape than in the movie, but he becomes a superb storyteller as well, evoking multiple characters with supreme mastery of pitch, pace, and tone.

From the Publisher:

Winner of the 1988 Booker Prize, this striking novel, set in Victorian England and Australia but told with a contemporary perspective, depicts the fatal and unrequited love shared by two remarkable misfits.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0571322840
• ISBN 13: 9780571322848
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 544