Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey (audiobook)

 genre: historical fiction

Oscar and Lucinda are from completely opposite sides of the British Empire.  Oscar, in England, is the son of an evangelical preacher whose tremendous and rigid enthusiasm for religion has shaped Oscar's view of the world in a very real sense.  Lucinda, on the other hand, is a child of the Australian colony and when early tragedy leads to the strange position of being an heiress, she is at loose ends.  What she decides to invest in, the strange obsession with gambling that both Oscar and Lucinda possess as well as the landscape of Australia itself - both its colonizers and its rivers and land, will influence the course of this tale.

Dang, this book was kind of a trial. Yes, it's interesting, otherwise I'd have given it up.  Yes, I wanted to see what happened to both our main characters.  Yes, it's sort of fascinating to watch the fortunes of people interplay with fate and circumstance.   But there is so much unnecessary backstory of unimportant people. There is so much random dialogue.   They are both such quirky humans with their own baggage and trauma making relationships so complicated.  It's sad to see people not live up to their potential but I do appreciate the idea that's woven throughout that our stories - and our part in them - are only a piece of reality.  We don't get to choose what happens in everyone else's story and the fact that it might impact us - or not - is sometimes just really up to chance.