Catching Oscar swallowing a second helping of Christmas pudding, that devilish parody of the consuming of the Host, Theophilus tells him he is eating Satan's fruit he forces Carey's novel that it is crystal clear to the reader that fatherĪnd son are divided by love, not hate. And it is one of the many triumphs of Mr. Theophilus's seeming cruelty to his son, his almost sensual rigidity of mind, springs from an excess of feeling rather than a lack of it. flew apart, it swarmed like fish, splintered like glass.''

In him a lifelong fear of salt water: ''It smelt of death to him. After his wife's death, Theophilus throws her ''lavender-sweet clothes'' into the sea, an act that, observed by little Oscar, induces Passion recognizes passion, and the father senses there is something not quite right about the boy, something separate, disturbing.Īll the same, the two are united by blood, by a dead woman whom they cannot talk about directly. He is behaving, one understands, in the child's best interests. In his concern to bring Oscar to God, and in much the same scientific way as he prizes the red-lipped anemones from the jagged promontories near his home, Theophilus tears Oscar from

His father, Theophilus Hopkins, a marine biologist and a religious fundamentalist, although sensitive to the evolution of starfish, is hopelessly inept at understanding The novel proper opens in the last half of the 19th century, when Oscar is a child. Lucinda's church isĪ great white whale of an adversary, a Moby Dick improbably spawned in the rock pools of Devon. The reflection of its glass bulk dazzles the reader from the opening chapters. The building of this church, which is not completed until the book is nearly through, commences early. The construction of ''Oscar & Lucinda'' rests upon the same cast-iron framework as the glass church, manufactured by Lucinda for transportation to a remote site on a river in New South Wales, that stands as a symbol of their impossible,Ĭhancy union. Both of them, fractured by childhood, are Lucinda has inherited a glass factory she too likes to deal the cards. Oscar is a compulsive gambler he'll bet on anything, even his own happiness. Eter Carey's third novel is about a man and a woman who meet on board a ship bound for Australia, fall in love and don't

Oscar and lucinda book review