Neither of these coming-of-age stories quite explains how the grownup Oscar and Lucinda each develops a guilty passion for gambling.
"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. 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. 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. Lucinda Leplastrier is a frizzy-haired heiress who impulsively buys a glass factory with the inheritance forced on her by a well-intentioned adviser. Oscar Hopkins is a high-strung preacher's kid with hydrophobia and noisy knees.
0 kommentar(er)
