Journal Entry 1 by elz-dad from Basingstoke, Hampshire United Kingdom on Sunday, April 25, 2004

This book tells the life story of Oscar Hopkins, who begins his life in the
1840s, living with his sternly religious father on the Devon coast. Oscar has
a faith of his own, but he and his father disagree about certain matters and
Oscar leaves home to study theology and become a churchman, eventually
emigrating to Australia. On the boat he meets Lucinda, who's life story we've
also been given. Lucinda is returning to Australia after a journey to England
(the purpose of which I can't remember now); she earlier inherited money with
which she bought a glass factory. Together Oscar and Lucinda make a plan to
build a church of glass.


I've had this book for over ten years and just got around to reading it.
It reminded me a bit of John Irving, with an unusual character as a
protagonist who's basically a good person struggling to overcome some kind of
personal defect (in Oscar's case it's gambling), and a slightly surreal
plotline.

Looking back on the book now, I feel like I should have enjoyed it more,
but in fact I found it a real struggle to get through it. There were only a
couple of chapters (out of 110 chapters) where the story gripped me, and for
the rest it was quite an effort. The section at the end with the glass church
rather baffled me: I tried (unsuccessfully) to work out the metaphorical
meaning of the episode, since I found it hard to believe that the characters
would actually have done this.

There were some good descriptive passages in here, one of which
particularly stuck in my mind: a bright sunny day is called "clay-white".
 

Journal Entry 2 by elz-dad at on Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Released on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 at British Heart Foundation Shop, book and music dept in Basingstoke, England United Kingdom. 

Journal Entry 3 by Astrofiammante on Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Have swapped a copy of Ben Elton's 'Dead Famous' for this copy of 'Oscar and Lucinda' today. Will report back after reading... 

Journal Entry 4 by Astrofiammante at British Heart Foundation Shop in Basingstoke, Hampshire United Kingdom on Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Released 5 yrs ago (9/2/2006 UTC) at British Heart Foundation Shop in Basingstoke, Hampshire United Kingdom

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

RELEASE NOTES:

I have a tall stack of books that represents my reading for most of the rest of the year. Time to accept that I'm not going to get around to this any time soon and get it back out in the wild.

Part of a small mass release to this OBCZ... 

Journal Entry 5 by Monos on Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Picked up this book in the British Heart Foundation Shop,Book and Music Dept, will read it and report back.