![]() ![]() Just out of mourning for her father, she has come to Australia for a new life with a case of "scandalously bright" clothes, only to witness her mother's drowning when their ship is wrecked as they arrive. When the novel describes how Miriam Chadwick's "lovely peach silk dress" is dyed black, falling "like a rose, a 'Prince's Pride', into a copper of Indian ink", it is to register the bitterly disappointed hopes of the wearer. ![]() Lucinda dons grey silk bloomers to proclaim her feminist sympathies Oscar's friend Wardley-Fish is a trainee clergyman aspiring to roguishness in "a loud hound's-tooth jacket with a handkerchief like a fistful of daffodils rammed into a rumpled vase". Even costume is character, not period colour. ![]() What is described is what matters to them. His narrative visualises because its leading characters think through their eyes. T he novel, being the genre of the ordinary world, respects circumstantial detail, but Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda gives unusual attention to visual particulars. ![]()
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