Oscar and Lucinda
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Narrated by:
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Steven Crossley
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By:
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Peter Carey
About this listen
Oscar Hopkins is a high-strung preacher's kid with hydrophobia and noisy knees. Lucinda Leplastrier is a frizzy-haired heiress who impulsively buys a glass factory with the inheritance forced on her by a well-intentioned adviser. In the early parts of this lushly written audiobook, author Peter Carey renders the seminal turning points in his protagonists' childhoods as exquisite 19th-century set pieces.
Young Oscar, denied the heavenly fruit of a Christmas pudding by his cruelly stern father, forever renounces his father's religion in favor of the Anglican Church. "Dear God," Oscar prays, "if it be thy will that thy people eat pudding, smite him!" Lucinda's childhood trauma involves a beautiful doll bought by her struggling mother with savings from the jam jar; in a misguided attempt to tame the doll's unruly curls, young Lucinda mutilates her treasure beyond repair. Neither of these coming-of-age stories quite explains how the grownup Oscar and Lucinda each develops a guilty passion for gambling. Oscar plays the horses while at school, and Lucinda, now an orphaned heiress, finds comfort in a game of cards with an odd collection of acquaintances.
When the two finally meet onboard a ship bound for New South Wales, they are bound by their affinity for risk, their loneliness, and their awkwardly blossoming (but unexpressed) mutual affection. Their final high-stakes folly - transporting a crystal palace of a church across (literally) godforsaken terrain - strains plausibility, and events turn ghastly as Oscar plays out his bid for Lucinda's heart. Yet even the unconvincing plot turns are made up for by Carey's rich prose and the tale's unpredictable outcome. Although love proves to be the ultimate gamble for Oscar and Lucinda, the story never strays too far from the terrible possibility that even the most thunderstruck lovers can remain isolated in parallel lives.
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One dark and stormy night in 1956, a stranger named Fludd mysteriously turns up in the dismal village of Fetherhoughton. He is the curate sent by the bishop to assist Father Angwin - or is he? In the most unlikely of places, a superstitious town that understands little of romance or sentimentality, where bad blood between neighbors is ancient and impenetrable, miracles begin to bloom. Fludd becomes lover, gravedigger, and savior, transforming his dull office into a golden regency of decision, unashamed sensation, and unprecedented action.
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Small, tight irreverant novel that wryly inverts
- By Darwin8u on 07-21-13
By: Hilary Mantel
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The Blind Assassin
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margot Dionne
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental.
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Good book, TERRIBLE audio!
- By Whitney on 04-27-09
By: Margaret Atwood
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Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories
- By: Kelly Link - editor, Gavin J. Grant - editor
- Narrated by: Sarah Coomes, Nico Evers-Swindell, Shannon McManus, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Imagine an alternate universe where romance and technology reign. Where tinkerers and dreamers craft and recraft a world of automatons, ornate clockworks, calculating machines, and other marvels that. Where scientists and schoolgirls, fair folk and Romans, intergalactic bandits, and intrepid orphans - decked out in corsets, clockwerk suits, and tall black boots - solve dastardly crimes, escape from monstrous predicaments, consult oracles, and hover over volcanoes in steam-powered airships.
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MMMM, Orca Bacon
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Wicked
- The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
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- Narrated by: John McDonough
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Heralded as an instant classic of fantasy literature, Maguire has written a wonderfully imaginative retelling of The Wizard of Oz told from the Wicked Witch's point of view. More than just a fairy tale for adults, Wicked is a meditation on the nature of good and evil.
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It's not easy being green
- By PangaeaReads on 07-30-08
By: Gregory Maguire
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The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock
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- By: Imogen Hermes Gowar
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
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In 1780s London, a prosperous merchant finds his quiet life upended when he unexpectedly receives an unusual creature - and meets a most extraordinary woman - in this much-lauded, atmospheric debut that examines our capacity for wonder, obsession, and desire. One September evening in 1785, Jonah Hancock hears an urgent knocking on his front door near the docks of London. The captain of one of Jonah’s trading vessels is waiting eagerly on the front step, bearing shocking news. On a voyage to the Far East, he sold the Jonah’s ship for something rare and far more precious: a mermaid.
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Gave up
- By Isabella Piestrzynska on 10-27-18
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The Underground River
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- By: Martha Conway
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It's 1838, and May Bedloe works as a seamstress for her cousin, the famous actress Comfort Vertue - until their steamboat sinks on the Ohio River. Though they both survive, both must find new employment. Comfort is hired to give lectures by noted abolitionist Flora Howard, and May finds work on a small flatboat, Hugo and Helena's Floating Theatre, as it cruises the border between the northern states and the southern slave-holding states.
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Excellent historical fiction audiobook
- By LindaJS on 10-03-17
By: Martha Conway
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East of the Sun
- By: Julia Gregson
- Narrated by: Tania Rodrigues
- Length: 19 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Autumn 1928. Three young women are on their way to India, each with a new life in mind. Rose, a beautiful but naive bride-to-be, is anxious about leaving her family and marrying a man she hardly knows. Victoria, her bridesmaid couldn't be happier to get away from her overbearing mother, and is determined to find herself a husband. And Viva, their inexperienced chaperone, is in search of the India of her childhood, ghosts from the past and freedom.
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Indian history takes a back seat to 3 young women
- By Richard on 05-24-16
By: Julia Gregson
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The Unseen
- A Novel
- By: Katherine Webb
- Narrated by: Clare Wille
- Length: 15 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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A vicar with a passion for nature, the Reverend Albert Canning leads a happy existence with his naive wife, Hester, in their sleepy Berkshire village in the year 1911. But as the English summer dawns, the Cannings' lives are forever changed by two new arrivals: Cat, their new maid, a disaffected, free-spirited young woman sent down from London after entanglements with the law; and Robin Durrant, a leading expert in the occult, enticed by tales of elemental beings in the water meadows nearby.
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Great book!
- By Dana on 09-03-12
By: Katherine Webb
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The Irishman's Daughter
- By: V.S. Alexander
- Narrated by: Lucy Rayner
- Length: 16 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Ireland, 1845. To Briana Walsh, no place on earth is more beautiful than Carrowteige, County Mayo. The small farms that surround the centuries-old Lear House are managed by her father, agent to the wealthy, reckless Sir Thomas Blakely. Tenant farmers sell the oats and rye they grow to pay rent to Sir Thomas, surviving on the potatoes that flourish in the remaining scraps of land. But when the potato crop falls prey to a devastating blight, families Briana has known all her life are left with no food, no resources, and no mercy from the English landowner.
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Wasted a credit
- By Emily Coonce on 05-26-19
By: V.S. Alexander
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Herzog
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of the National Book Award when it was first published in 1964, Herzog traces five days in the life of a failed academic whose wife has recently left him for his best friend. Through the device of letter writing, Herzog movingly portrays both the internal life of its eponymous hero and the complexity of modern consciousness.
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Grows Within You
- By Chris Reich on 08-06-11
By: Saul Bellow
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Taking us inside one of the 20th century's most ambitious assassination attempts - "making history personal", as one character puts it - High Dive moves between the luxurious hospitality of a British tourist town and the troubled city of Belfast, Northern Ireland, at the height of the armed struggle between the Irish Republican Army and those loyal to the UK government.
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What listeners say about Oscar and Lucinda
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- melissa
- 05-21-16
peter carey writes delicious prose
Worth it, loved, it, awesome storytelling and well read. this is one of my favs!
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- Joy
- 02-23-17
excellent read!
this is my first time reading Carey and it was a roller coaster I'd ride again and again. What an adventure!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Ruth Lambert
- 11-13-19
Utterly compelling, and odd!
This unusually well written book has metaphors and similes of great depth, beauty and originality. They dress up this story like Christmas baubles bedeck a tree. It was only the denouement that was entirely unexpected, and completely changed the meaning of the story. Bravo!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Darwin8u
- 10-25-15
A book to wade in, submerge into.
“She thought: When we are two, they do not notice us. They think us a match. What wisdom does a mob have? It is a hydra, an organism, stupid or dangerous in much of its behavior, but could it have, in spite of this, a proper judgement about which of its component parts fit best together?”
― Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda
A book to love. A book to wade in, submerge into. A novel that tempts one to grab it around the middle and squeeze, even as it dances away like a shadow. It flickers like the quiet, mirrored Doppler effect of water flowing around a pair of swans. It plays coy. It trips backwards. At times, it really IS too much. But I still love/d it. The prose? Beautiful. The story? Magnificent. Worlds of glass, chance, love, passion, obsession, stars-crossed, God, compulsion, sin, materialism and generosity of spirit. Just like a coin spun/tossed/launched at midday into the sky will twist head over tails -- at once both reflecting and in turn blocking the sun-- this book twists between obsessive Oscar and compulsive Lucinda and spun wildly around a whole slew of characters and just spun there, suspended forever, threatening never to come down. And then it did. And it was glorious.
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24 people found this helpful
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- Rita Jupe
- 06-22-23
Reminiscent of Charles Dickens
A range of characters, a range of tones, all set in a compelling historic context.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Robin
- 02-24-19
Not a romance!
This was offered under the Romance package. I realized that it was more of a historical saga, which is fine, as I like those. I expected something about the founding of Australia and the connection of 2 people. The story was episodic and very talky, with long conversations and some characters that really had little to do with the story. The main characters are very odd. It's actually anti-romantic, which again isn't bad in itself but not what I expected. The narration was very good but the book was way too long for what tit conveyed.
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- perspective
- 08-11-16
A masterpiece
Incredible characterisation. Beautifully crafted like a Dicken's' novel. Poignant and evocative. I would highly recommend this novel.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Mary
- 12-28-15
Good Yarn
I am a pretty serious Peter Carey fan so I was eager to see what many critics think his best book would be like. I loved the True History of the Kelley Gang, was disappointed and confused by Parrot and Olivier in America and enchanted by My Life as A Fake. I'm sorry I was led to believe Oscar and Lucinda would somehow rise above these because then I could have appreciated it for what it is, which is pretty good. It is another historical yarn--not a romance even though it has a love story at its centre--built around two flawed, unlikeable characters--one a stiff-necked puritan man and the other a wilful, independent woman--who combine to create a scandalous, eccentric legend in colonial Australia. It was fine, but it went on too long about Oscar's ridiculous trials of conscience, Lucinda's unlikely feminism and meanwhile abandoned its one amusing character, the scoundrely Fish. Still, a good thumping read.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Luz O
- 02-02-16
Beautifully written and performed
Oscar and Lucinda sheds light upon various facets of the human condition that often go ignored in contemporary literature. These days, certain curious qualities found in characters-- being quietly vulnerable, theologically torn, stubbornly self-defeating, or frustratingly ashamed-- aren't necessarily glamorous enough to grab the average reader's attention. The book unravels slowly, yet each page adds to the richness of the story and all of its players. It blends the Dickensian themes of societal boundaries and the spirit's inner turmoil with the fantastical love and vibrant beauty so often associated with Latin American magic realism. It is a treasure that will play at your heart strings. If you're open to the ambling nature of the tale, you'll soon find yourself surprisingly, and totally, engulfed in the lives and intertwining fates of Oscar and Lucinda.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Story
- Anonymous
- 07-22-24
Too much needless detail
This book could’ve been 2/3 shorter than it was. Tedious and too many characters.
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