The Luminaries

Ahhhh. Now that was a good read. A ripping yarn, as they say; I hardly noticed it was more than 800 pages long. The Luminaries is set in New Zealand in 1865-66, when a gold rush brought prospectors to Hokitika in the country's West Coast region. Shops, churches, bars, hotels, newspapers, a jail, and "houses of ill repute" rose up to satisfy the many requirements of a booming economy. And everyone, prospector and merchant alike, was out for themselves.

Into this environment comes Walter Moody, arrived in Hokitika via the ship Godspeed. He unwittingly walks into a secret conference of twelve men in the Crown Hotel, and becomes privy to a narrative of recent events involving Frank Carver, captain of the Godspeed; Crosbie Wells, a hermit; show more Alastair Louderback, a local politician; Lydia Greenway, a madame; the prostitute Anna Wetherell; Emery Staines, a young man who has gone missing; and, of course, a fortune in pure gold. In Part I, which represents nearly half the novel, Eleanor Catton spins the tale through the eyes of these twelve men. None of them know the full story, but each has a perspective based on their interactions with the principals.

Catton then proceeds to flesh out the story, always from an angle slightly askew from that in Part I. The reader picks up details here and there, like filling in a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle after someone else has completed the edge. The principal characters take on greater depth as their back stories unfold. I found myself hissing at the bad guys and cheering for the good guys, and then looking quizzically a the page when a good guy suddenly showed signs of being a bad guy, or vice versa. The plot is complex and circular, but really the conflict resolution hardly matters. This is a fun book to read for its characters, and the intricacies and pace. I'm usually happy when I finish a book this long, but this time I'm actually tempted to re-read it straight away. show less

This book, for me, starts out better than it ends. The first sections are engrossing, detailed and mysterious. I didn’t know what was happening, but it unfolded small piece by small piece, slowly creating a picture of some unexplained events experienced by 12 men in an isolated setting on the west coast of New Zealand. Like a long 19th century novel by Wilkie Colllins, it builds a mystery from the fragments that each participant sees, while a listener tries to puzzle it out and understand how it relates to the mystery in his own life.
In the sections that follow, the characters find more pieces of information, and intriguingly end up in a big courtroom scene in which they conspire to present a false story to the judge. But in more and show more more brief snippets of the story, the villain dies mysteriously, the conspirators continue to live frustrated lives and the hero and heroine seem drawn together by unknown forces. The last sections are so brief that it felt as if the author got so tired of writing out the first part that she was no longer interested in finishing the novel. Or perhaps she is telling us that her novel is not an entertainment, but it is a highly wrought literary creation and ought to be appreciated as such.
In part, this reflects one theme of the novel, that everyone has their own piece of the story, and it can never come together in a complete and satisfactory way. But here, it seems as if Catton’s objective is to deliberately alienate her readers and tell them that the interesting story she began with isn’t worth her time, or theirs, and they should just deal with it. Or instead, appreciate the artful way she has structured the story, like the phases of the moon or the spiral of a fern. There is a great deal of artistry that I admire in the novel, but the structure feels more like clever trickery than artfulness.
What I do admire particularly, in addition to the intricate plotting, is the detailed picture Catton creates of a small 19th century frontier town. Reading her description of Hokitika gives me a parallel to the goldrush towns of British Columbia, which I’ve grown up with but not seen portrayed so well. Catton has researched the language and lifestyles so thoroughly that I can visualize the settings and how the characters fit into them. Even the details of claims registration, banking and shipping insurance fit plausibly into the narrative in a way that seems accurate and precise. Many writers describing details of contemporary society are not as successful. The characters are also plausible and varied. I assume they fit the astrological structure that Catton imposes on the book, although whether they do or not seems to have no bearing on the story and I was not interested enough in that aspect to try to work it out.
Perhaps because of the frontier setting, the range of characters is limited. The women characters are largely overshadowed by the men, with only two women showing any kind of agency even though the story revolves around them. Two Chinese laborers play small roles but both have the depth of a backstory. The Maori character has the least development of the central characters. He comes and goes at his will and is portrayed with sympathy, but we know nothing of his background and little of his motivation. If Catton is trying to avoid appropriation of an indigenous character, she ends up coming close to stereotyping him as the silent unknowable native. Perhaps this is how her 19th century characters saw him, but her readers see all the other characters through 21st century eyes, and it seems inconsistent to let him remain a shadow.
In spite of my criticism, I enjoyed reading the book. It filled up my Christmas hours pleasureably even if I didn’t fully appreciate the literary construction that it seems to be. show less

This is a complicated novel that rewards the reader who can stay the course. You know that a novel is going to have some complications when it begins with, not only a "Note to the Reader" about the use of "stellar and planetary positions" in the story, but there follows a "Character Chart" on the subsequent page. With twenty listed characters, twelve of whom are the "luminaries" mentioned in the first sentence of the opening chapter and one of whom is dead, you quickly perceive both the value of this chart and its importance for your sanity as a reader.

Needless to say, due to the complications of the plot I will not be able to recount all of the events that occur in the twelve parts into which the story is divided. No risk of any plot show more spoilers here. However some of the highlights of the story that were impressed on my memory include: Five dresses filled with gold, more gold discovered in a dead hermit’s cottage, a lovely young prostitute who nearly overdosed on opium, questions about the ownership of a boat named the Godspeed, and the motivations of the dozen “luminaries” who have gathered together in the smoking room of a second-rate New Zealand hotel when the novel opens to discuss a few of these curiosities.

Catton's prose style is engaging, which helps when the first part is a mere 360 pages (and even this number is significant). The narration starts with one of the twelve, Thomas Balfour, but an omniscient narrator takes over to "impose a regimental order upon the impatient chronicle of the shipping agent’s roving mind". Thank goodness. Otherwise the novel might have run on for another 800 pages. The first part ends with a neat little summary of some of the high points so far and the remaining eleven parts gradually shorten so much that the final four parts average less than three pages each.

The various story lines do come together (I believe) and there are more notable events including an evil ship’s captain with a C-shaped scar, a brothel madam who conducts a seance, a blackmailed politician and a riveting courtroom scene, and a phantom aboard the Godspeed, “the dead man rising, his bloody throat, his cry,” that greets Walter Moody (whom we also met back on the first page) on his way to New Zealand. It is the New Zealand of 1865 and 1866 that is the setting for this novel that proves you do not have to cover a great many years to produce a long (830 pp) novel. It reminded me of Vikram Seth's skill in portraying about two years of Indian history over a span of more than 1400 pages in his delightful novel, A Suitable Boy.

Eleanor Catton succeeds in creating an historical mystery(s) with a byzantine plot that manages to entertain on almost every page. She was so successful that she was awarded the 2013 Mann Booker Prize; a prize that usually goes to short, dense, self-consciously literary novels. The entertainment was sufficient for this reader to recommend the book to all who enjoy big novels that are both complicated and satisfying. show less

This book, set in New Zealand during the gold rush, was fascinating, not the least for its structure. If I understand the parameters Catton set for herself (and I'm not certain I do), each of twelve characters represented a different astrological sign, and each of seven additional characters represented the seven heavenly bodies known at the time (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, sun and moon), with an additional (deceased) character identified as "terra firma." The interactions among these characters (here's where I start speculating) were dictated by the movements of the stars and planets at the time the actions of the book were set. Also, each section is exactly half the length of the section before it.

To me, the impressive show more feat is that the reader can disregard the existence of each of these rules and simply enjoy an absorbing, engaging yarn, full of mystery, murder, gold, love, lust, revenge, betrayal . . . I don't want to give anything away, but suffice it to say that I could not put the book down. I'm not sure if the progressive compression was a factor in hurtling me forward? But I found myself staying up well past my bedtime on multiple nights, just to read a bit further.

As much as I enjoyed the story itself, it's the structure that keeps me thinking about the book. show less

In 1866, a diverse and international cast of characters converges on Hokitika, a New Zealand gold-mining port-town. The protagonists grapple with a number of mysterious goings-on in the town - the disappearance of a young businessman, the sudden and suspicious death of a drunk in whose home a hidden fortune is discovered, an attempted suicide by a locally well-known prostitute who vigorously denies having tried to take her life. It soon becomes evident that the search for the truth will not be easy...

The Luminaries was the 2013 Booker Prize winner and it is not difficult to see why. A sprawling, 800 page novel, it is kept together by a meticulously crafted structure inspired by astrology (which, incidentally, plays quite a central role show more in the plot). Characters are analysed with great psychological insight; settings and interiors are described in a poetic prose which could well serve as textbook extracts for creative writing classes. Underlying the novel are suitably profound queries - to what extent are we masters of our fate? What are the elements which govern human behaviour? For lovers of 19th century novels there are then knowing "inside" references to the genres which dominated Romantic narrative fiction - the sensation novel, the revenge/adventure yarn, the crime/mystery story, seafaring tale, the ghost story.

Yet, despite its brilliance, The Luminaries somehow doesn't add up to the sum of its parts. As a crime novel it is simply too long, so much so that the characters helpfully recapitulate the salient elements of the plot every couple of chapters. As a supernatural tale it is unconvincing. It is definitely worth reading but, for me at least, it was no page-turner and not what I would call a "ghost story". show less

The luminaries in this huge novel are the heavenly bodies—the twelve signs of the Zodiac and the seven wandering stars (planets) that move through them. Or rather, they are nineteen characters who represent them and whose interactions form the complex plot. There is a twentieth person, Crosbie Wells. Like Marley, he is dead to begin with, and his death is, in effect, the inciting incident that sets the plot in motion (he does show up in flashbacks throughout the book). A chart listing these twenty characters at the beginning of the book identifies him as Terra Firma, that is, Earth. But since Earth is the standpoint we all share from which we look up to observe the heavenly spectacle (to the degree that we can in our light-polluted show more world), this is unsettling rather than helpful.

Given this overt astrological underpinning, the success of this book depends on whether it works for a reader like me who knows little and cares less about astrology. And in this, the novel succeeds. For me, Catton’s use of the lore of the stars is like the complex forms that a poet self-imposes as a spur to greater creativity. You don’t have to know what a villanelle is to enjoy ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”.

One particular challenge Catton has imposed on herself is that she has thereby created twenty central characters. She orchestrates this difficulty skillfully by shifting the narrative from one to another or from interactions between just two or a few of them. A problem remained for me, nonetheless, as I struggled to determine whether any of these was the protagonist. Was it Moody (Mercury), who stumbles uninvited into a council of the twelve, gathered to share what they know about the death of Crosbie, the disappearance of another character, and the near-death of a third? I was so glad, by the way, that Catton didn’t get heavy-handed and place this meeting in the Mount Olympus hotel.

It is these other two, Emery Staines (missing and presumed dead for most of the book) and the nearly-dead Anna Wetherell, astral twins (sun and moon), who share this role, I decided. Casting the antagonists was easier, by comparison. Although none of the characters is without sin, so to speak, there is a pair, representing Venus and Mars, who outshine the rest in evil-doing (and in keeping the plot moving). Francis Carver is presented in a relentlessly negative light throughout. He has wronged so many of the others that the reader is unsurprised when he is finally murdered. We had only been waiting to see who would do him in. Venus, on the other hand, has a different kind of malevolence; she can dissimulate so brazenly that she almost succeeds in convincing others of her good-heartedness. Her occult skills and business acumen lead her from one successful venture to another. Crucially, it is she—Lydia Greenway Wells Carver—whose hand is on the Wheel of Fortune and sets it spinning.

Oh, and the plot revolves around a fortune in gold. I lost track of all the ways it changed hands; this aspect reminded me of one of the shaggy-dog plots of a Marx Brothers film (“the picsh — whosa got the picsh?”). At the same time, the book reads like an extended meditation on one of the truest sentences in a book that serves as a crucial prop, used to hide a document that could affect the disposition of the treasure: “Avarice is a root of all evil.” Indeed. But it makes for an entertaining read. show less

What I notice right away, from the Table of Contents and a review, is the chapters and parts are broken up mathematically, the length diminishing from part one -at 360 pages - to parts six through twelve which appear to occupy only a few pages each. And then the list of characters - each described by their Zodiac sign or planetary association.

The cryptic astronomical diagrams reveal that there is a lot going on here, beyond what the action of the book describes. The thrill of reading The Luminaries is this constant speculation around the mysterious plot, the bizarre relationship to the characters their astrological associations, and the construction of the book itself. The book is constantly morphing into something else, and it is show more never clear from where or to where this book will go. Look at the Night sky as pictured for each part, and we see the characters drift in and out of the tale, some completely disappearing from both chart and story.

The first section opened with several different tales from a variety of characters, all converging in a smoking room - bar. There are several mysteries and characters, all of whom we are given some details and each is potentially implicated or stands to gain or lose from the outcome. The details of the mysteries maybe not as intriguing as who is shady or not. Given the complexity of this mystery, with a whole city involved at some level in the crimes. The tale is set in a harbor town experiencing a gold rush in 1865-66. The actual dates correspond with certain astronomical patterns that were seen over New Zealand.

Historical novels need maps. One was not provided in my editions, would have been useful. But maybe the star charts are a more important clue to the more heavenly realms where the story really takes place.

I love exposition, and The Luminaries serves it up in hefty servings. I felt very much transported to this exotic old locale, as wild and odd as any fantasy planet. Catton's Hokitika is about as real as Moonrise Kingdoms's New Penzance. That is, it is less a real place than a literary ideal, the city we picture based on our descriptions of a past we never lived in. Anderson's sixties are a hyper-real literary ideal based on pop culture references. Catton's universe is equally distant from her, but just as full of life. This is a universe constructed between the author's and reader's agreement that it is a rich time to be written about.

We start with Walter Moody, but the narration jumps around a bit, but not in a jarring way. The author blatantly announces when the voice has changed, and who is now telling their version of the tale. The brief introduction at the beginning of each chapters are fun and make this enormous tome very digestable. The question I had after 200 pages, is will all the clever literary tricks add up to a great book, or just a bunch of clever ideas for a book? Either way, I was hooked.

The characters are not developed in a traditional way. Instead, when any of them come on the scene we get only the most pertinent details as related to the story, this being an economical way of acquainting us with the twenty main characters. Catton's descriptions sounded very much like how Wes Anderson gives us his characters, in a very matter-of-fact, cheeky manner. I wondered whether the lack of depth on characters would hurt the book. It doesn't, their personalities only matter as far as they make impressions upon other characters, and what their motivations are, and some of these can be assumed based on their Zodiac sign. I found this character list mighty helpful.

The Luminaries

This ends up being one of the themes. The characters can and do transform themselves based on their situation and their company. Our well-regarded Emery Staines is respected merely based on a single gold strike. His entire noble reputation rests on the fact that he found a piece of rock. Whereas his astrological counterpart suffers a reversal of fortune and livelihood at the same time.

The few turns of events did land with more heft than I expected. You could have been playing a piano cowboy saloon number through the first third, with the group sitting in the smoking room. Much of this felt like an old Western, or Sherlock Holmes' parlor. But instead of the Sheriff hunting down the outlaws or an investigator uncovering the crimes, there was no clear good or bad guys. No one was what they seemed. Every one had an angle, there was a lot of gold hidden in that cottage and someone was angling to get it by law or by force. The beauty of it is that all the clues are right there, and the first character who can put it together will be rich or redeemed. Moody is the original lens we see the story develop from, but his view is gradually narrowed as his planet (Mercury) leaves the Southern sky.

With chapters promising to get shorter, and reveal more as I read, I feel the weight of the enormous doorstop start to loosen, and make itself unravel in a perfect cacophony of all the stories and characters.

I was spellbound by this book. It was like a good record album; when I listen to it, it feels like there is no other music that matters. The Luminaries was this engrossing.

There are only twelve days of action in The Luminaries, but each reveals the story from different angles, each chapter reveals more, and alternatively obscures anything I was certain about. The confines, mathematical, astrologically. It provides the organized madness in which this deeply plotted murder mystery unfolds, and folds. Chapters halving themselves. Money halving itself in shares, loyalties moving with each turn and a sinister plot to destroy our heroes.

Magnificent. show less