Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
About the book
Aboard a ship bound for Australia, English Anglican priest Oscar Hopkins meets Lucinda Leplastrier, an Australian heiress who owns a Sydney glassworks. Both conceal a compulsion to gamble: Oscar reconciles it with his faith, while Lucinda seeks a working life beyond the roles permitted to women. Their attachment in nineteenth-century New South Wales leads to an unlikely undertaking, a glass church that Oscar agrees to transport to a remote settlement.
Reader notes
A present-day descendant narrates this digressive historical novel, lingering over religious disputes, intersecting lives and peculiar everyday details. The love story develops slowly, and sexual relationships remain discreetly described. Eccentric comedy coexists with serious violence and abuse.
How it reads
Writing style
Descriptive · Witty
Tone
Humorous · Romantic
Structure
Nonlinear
Driven by
Character · Ideas · Relationships
Point of view
Mixed viewpoints
Setting
England · New South Wales, Australia
Reading complexity
Writing
4 / 5
Ideas
4 / 5
Structure
4 / 5
Background knowledge
2 / 5
About this profile
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
Writing
How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas
How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure
How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge
Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity
Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.
Themes
Class
Colonialism and empire
Love
Obsession
Religion and faith
Content notes
Violence
Strong
Sexual content
Mild
Swearing
None
Substance use
Mild
Abuse
Strong
Self-harm or suicide
Mild
Standing and awards
Canonical
Booker Prize, 1988
Everyman's Library
Questions readers ask
How long is it?
448 pages in the Vintage 1997 paperback edition.
Which edition is shown here?
Vintage · 1997 · Paperback. ISBN 9780679777502.
How long does it take to read Oscar and Lucinda?
About 9 hours at 50 pages an hour, based on the 448-page Vintage edition. Dense books can take longer.
About the author
Peter Carey
Peter Carey is an Australian novelist whose fiction ranges from colonial historical narratives to dark contemporary fables. He often builds stories around unstable testimony, contested ownership, and characters whose private obsessions collide with larger systems of power. His prose shifts from ornate description and comic exaggeration to blunt, fragmentary speech, with narrative form carrying much of the historical argument. True History of the Kelly Gang takes the shape of a fictional memoir, using a voice modeled partly on Ned Kelly’s Jerilderie Letter to let an outlaw dispute the official record while constructing his own legend. Jack Maggs approaches the convict history behind Great Expectations from the transported man’s side, setting its protagonist against a novelist eager to appropriate his experience. Carey also gives ideas concrete, precarious forms. In Oscar & Lucinda, faith, chance, colonial ambition, and an eccentric romance converge in the wager to move a glass church through an unforgiving landscape.
