OSCAR AND LUCINDA by Peter Carey

At first I thought this book was just about gambling—obsession with gambling, gambling in secret, guilt over gambling, and passing judgment on gambling.  However, about halfway through the book, the plot becomes focused on one wager between the title characters.  Oscar develops a gambling system that enables him to attend Oxford and then sail from England to Australia in the mid-1800s.  This journey is especially taxing, as he is terrified of open water.  Lucinda, living in Sydney and purchasing a glassworks with her inheritance, goes to England to find a husband.  She fails in that endeavor and meets Oscar on her return voyage.  She is more of a compulsive gambler, with plenty of resources, but her gender hampers her ability to nourish her obsession.  The problem with this novel is that the pace is agonizingly slow.  The book finally becomes somewhat interesting, though, when Oscar embarks on an ill-advised expedition that has consequences neither he nor Lucinda, nor the reader, for that matter, could have imagined.  One thing that annoyed me about this novel is that it is so wordy that I at times overlooked important events that were buried in a lot of descriptive language, and I had to retrace to find what I had missed.  Also, the narration is actually first person, with Oscar’s great-grandson as the narrator, and each time the word “I” popped up, I had to remind myself who that was, as the vast majority of the book has nothing to do with Oscar’s progeny.