Oscar and Lucida cover I’ll see most anything with Ralph Fiennes in it. Or with Kate Blanchett, for that matter. Combine the two and you’ll know that of course I went to go see this film when it came out in 1997. And I walked out disappointed, frustrated at the disjointed plot and the strange way the characters were just abandoned, stranded at the end of the story.

Despite the stars, I thought maybe it was the movie’s fault. The book, after all, won the Booker Prize, something I hold in very high esteem, too. So I picked it up and — guess what — still a little disappointed.

The characters are certainly wonderfully unique and complex. Oscar, an Anglican priest who pays for divinity school by gambling at the track, is a gawky, awkward and naive young man who is afraid of water. Lucinda is a young woman who lost her parents and gained an inheritance, though she feels so guilty about the unexpected boon that she seems to want to lose the money as fast as possible in various games of chance. The two gamblers are thrown together during a England-to-Australia boat trip and fall in love — and into scandal.

Carefully and artfully told, slowly and surely, the tale is surely interesting. However, perhaps a little TOO slowly, especially near the end. While some great images from the conclusion of the book stuck with me — a glass church floating down a river, for instance — the wrap up left me cold, confused. I felt indignation for these complex characters I’d come to love so much, who I saw as simply being dumped off in the middle of nowhere plot-wise. Just like the movie, the book seemed disjointed. Now I usually like novels that don’t hit you over the head with the moral of their story, but a trail of breadcrumbs is sometimes nice, and I felt I missed (or the book lacked?) some unifying thread, something to make it hum and resonate.

But despite these somewhat minor flaws, I’d pick up anything Peter Carey wrote without a second thought when I come across him in the future. His rich prose is creative and magnetic, unusual and unique. And I still rate the novel …

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars – Book club selection