Oscar Hopkins and Lucinda Leplastrier are two of the most interesting characters I have encountered. I can well see why this book won the Booker Prize in 1988. (One of the other books on the shortlist that year was The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie so it had stiff competition.)
The story takes place in both England and Australia. Oscar Hopkins grew up in Devon as the son of a...
more Oscar Hopkins and Lucinda Leplastrier are two of the most interesting characters I have encountered. I can well see why this book won the Booker Prize in 1988. (One of the other books on the shortlist that year was The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie so it had stiff competition.)
The story takes place in both England and Australia. Oscar Hopkins grew up in Devon as the son of a preacher in a Christian sect called the Plymouth Brethren, an ecumenical movement that did not hold with the celebration of Christmas or other fripperies. Lucinda Leplastrier was Australian born although her parents were English. Her father fell off a horse and died and her mother decided to stay and continue farming their land near Parramatta, which is now part of Sydney but in the 1800s was a separate city. When her mother succumbed to illness Lucinda was left an orphan but quite wealthy. Oscar was also sort of an orphan as his mother had died when he was young and he abandoned his father to go live with the Anglican minister because he felt God wanted him to follow the Anglican faith. Oscar went to Oxford to learn to be a minister himself and while there he started gambling in order to support himself. Lucinda, meanwhile, went to Sydney and purchased a glassworks with her inheritance. In the course of doing so she fell in with two men who would have a lasting effect on her life. The first was The Reverend Dennis Hasset, an Anglican vicar but also a man who had written and lectured about glass. The second was Mr. d'Abbs, an accountant recommended to Lucinda to help her look after her money. d'Abbs was responsible for introducing Lucinda to gambling and Hasset became the object of Lucinda's desire. Lucinda went on a visit to England to either get married or encourage Hasset to propose to her. On the return trip, taken on the huge steamship Leviathan, she met Oscar who was emigrating to Australia. Of course two gamblers will eventually play cards together but during this game a bad storm comes up. Oscar, who is deeply afraid of the sea, thinks this is a judgment and resolves to give up gambling. Nevertheless he falls back into the habit and he and Lucinda end up playing poker in his living room in the house he is entitled to as the vicar of Randwick. When they are discovered at dawn by a church deacon Oscar is turfed out of the church. Lucinda takes pity on him and brings him to her home where the two of them live quite chastely. Lucinda, thinking to put Oscar at ease, tells him she is in love with Hasset although she now loves Oscar. Oscar loves Lucinda but is willing to sacrifice to make Lucinda happy. He proposes that he will deliver a glass church that Lucinda's factory will make to Hasset's congregation in Boat Harbour. They make a wager of their inheritances, he that he will get it to Boat Harbour by Easter and she that he won't. Then Lucinda does all in her power to make Oscar's wager succeed. This unusual proposition is hampered by Oscar's fear of water as the sea is the usual route from Sydney to Boat Harbour. The final chapters detail Oscar's overland trip to Boat Harbour. The ending was a great surprise to me and I will leave it a surprise to any future readers.
Definitely a book worth reading and I would agree that it has its place on the 1001 Books to Read before you Die list.
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