I'm not quite sure if there's such a thing as the Great Australian Novel, but if there is, Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda richly realised is probably in with a good shout. Epic, in the right way, in terms of scope and intensity, it certainly ticked the box marked 'ambition'. The central characters were and the supporting cast retained all the quirks and grotesqueries you would hope for from such an ensemble.
Best of all though is the narrative. Clearly a master of his craft, Carey's writing is effortless. It's not short and sharp like Hemingway or Coetzee, neither is it rambling and descriptive like Fitzgerald or Dickens, but it's infinitely readable. In a pick-it-up-and-be-enthralled kind of way. I've also read his True History of the Kelly Gang and that was equally readable. It works in a smooth, effortless sort of way, nothing abrupt and nothing that requires too much concentration, yet above all it seamlessly maintains the suspension of disbelief and fully absorbs you into whatever it is you're reading. And you can't ask for a lot more than that.
Which certainly helps because a story about a Victorian clergyman and an orphaned glass manufacturer probably wouldn't be my first choice of reading material. Yet the characters are riveting, despite, or rather because of their faults, their gambling, their mutual outsiderness. And the story has everything, putting the reader through a range of emotions in a wonderfully subtle understated way, concluding with a fitting ending. Bleedin' marvellous, cobber.
Book number: 12
Title: Oscar and Lucinda
Author: Peter Carey
Category: Books that have been sat on my bookshelf for too long
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