Oscar has an early education in visual detail from his naturalist father Theophilus, who 'had an eye well trained to the nicest degree'. The novel's early chapters, much influenced by Edmund Gosse's memoir Father and Son, find a rationale for visual attentiveness. Now it is back to mourning, as the woman who employs her as a governess pushes the glowing frock into the dye: 'the dress sucked in the black and first it ran in blurry lines along the fine pleats and then it spread, a rush of grey, a blanket of black'. Just out of mourning for her father, she has come to Australia for a new life with a case of 'scandalously bright' clothes, only to witness her mother's drowning when their ship is wrecked as they arrive. When the novel describes how Miriam Chadwick's 'lovely peach silk dress' is dyed black, falling 'like a rose, a 'Prince's Pride', into a copper of Indian ink', it is to register the bitterly disappointed hopes of the wearer. Lucinda dons grey silk bloomers to proclaim her feminist sympathies Oscar's friend Wardley-Fish is a trainee clergyman aspiring to roguishness in 'a loud hound's-tooth jacket with a handkerchief like a fistful of daffodils rammed into a rumpled vase'. Even costume is character, not period colour. What is described is what matters to them. His narrative visualises because its leading characters think through their eyes. Carey writes as if the world he has created, and his own private life, are at stake.T he novel, being the genre of the ordinary world, respects circumstantial detail, but Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda gives unusual attention to visual particulars.

'As fine a love story and as fascinating an exploration as any reader could wish. 'The most original and rewarding novel to appear in the English language for many years.' Financial Times 'We have a great novelist living on the planet with us and his name is Peter Carey.' Los Angeles Times Book Review 'It fills me with wild, savage envy, and no novelist could say fairer than that.' Angela Carter, The Guardian 'Genius is a devalued, overworked word, but make no mistake about it, in that department Peter Carey has been richly blessed.' Punch Like the characters of Charles Dickens and Honore de Balzac, Mr Carey's creations are real in the simplest human sense.' Washington Times

Love will prove to be their ultimate gamble. When the two finally meet, on board a ship to New South Wales, they are bound by their affinity for gambling and risk, their loneliness, and their awkwardly blossoming mutual affection. Lucinda Leplastrier, a frizzy-haired heiress, impulsively buys a glass factory with the inheritance forced on her by a well-intentioned adviser.

Oscar Hopkins, the hydrophobic, noisy-kneed son of a preacher, renounces his father's stern religion in favour of the Anglican Church.

Oscar and lucinda by peter carey