By now most of us already know, whether we’ve read it or not, that Peter Carey’s new novel, Oscar and Lucinda, is about God, glass and gambling, and that in the last few pages a glass church floats up the Bellinger river. We know because the book has been reviewed in just about every major newspaper and magazine in the country. There have been speeches and public appearances, extracts, profiles and interviews. This is the sort of literary event that publishers dream of. Carey’s last book, Illywhacker, was short­listed for the Booker Prize and sold sixty thousand copies of the paperback edition in Australia alone– astonishing when you consider that the average new novel by an unknown writer appears in a print run of three thousand. It’s not bad going for a writer who has only five published books to his credit. What’s more, Carey is now in this mid forties, which is mere chickenhood for a writer, so we can reasonably expect him to build a most illus­trious career indeed.

But one of the extraordinary things about Peter Carey is that while the public clearly loves him, reviewers have tended to be more cautious, in some cases downright scathing. When Illywhacker appeared, it was criticised quite vehemently for being incoherent. That sort of claim is potentially very damaging to both the writer and the book. In the case of Oscar and Lucinda, you might even have been unlucky enough to read a review that ruined the book for you by telling the story, particularly the fate of the two lovers – a mortal sin as far as reviewing novels is concerned.