The Luminaries: A Novel (Man Booker Prize)

I’ve never read a book quite like “The Luminaries,” an 840-page tale of skullduggery and betrayal in a gold rush town in New Zealand in the 1860s. it’s too long but when the last page is turned, you hunger for more. The story of fortunes made and fortunes lost is told backwards and forwards, circling around Eleanor Catton’s central insight that the pursuit of riches is a neverending story, revolving everywhere around us like the astral array. As she writes about her story: “…his narrative had been further convoluted by countless interruptions, clarifications, and echoes—all chasing one another, as endless circles, going round. What a convoluted picture it was—and how difficult to see—in its entirety!”The characters who scrabble for gold in the Antipodean mud—and those who prey on them—are often venal, sometimes self-sacrificing, or both. There’s a whore with a heart of dross, a naïve greenhorn willing to do anything for a handful of pure, a local Mr. Big with many small schemes, a name-changing bounder, an identity thief, some claim-jumpers, a shipping clerk, a couple of Chinese, a Frenchman and a Maori. There’s a trunk full of gowns full of gold. There’s a shipwreck, a shiptheft, opium here and opium there, a dramatic séance, and a trial of the century…and it’s all governed by astrological predetermination—which is upside-down because everything happens in the Southern Hemisphere.“The Luminaries” won Britain’s premier literary prize for its prodigiously talented 28-year-old author. If you have a spare week, read it.

This book immediately caught my eye based on its unique setting and structure and fun plot, and the fact that it won the Man Booker Prize. I decided to get this book (got the kindle version) despite reading some reviews that the book was "too long" or that characters "weren't developed" and I am SO GLAD that I did! I loved it! thrilling and engaging, with many interesting and diverse characters. The astrological structure superimposed over the plot added a larger meaning/purpose to the book that took it beyond a classic (albeit engaging) murder/blackmail mystery. I also had a very basic understanding of astrology but didn't feel that hampered my understand or enjoyment of the book. I enjoyed reading every second of it, and it was a very quick read despite its length due to the fact that most of it is engaging dialogue between characters. You might not get a super fairy-tale-ending resolution to all the character's storylines, but Catton's writing is truly brilliant. A perk of reading this on a kindle, is that you can click on the many character's names and be given a background on who they are and what astrological sign/planet they are associated with, and also be able to translate/define vocabulary words that are specific to New Zealand. I wish there was a translator for Maori though! I had to type the passages into google translate on my phone, not sure why the language wouldn't be included in the Kindle translator. Overall: Very glad I read this book!! It is so complex, I could easily see myself reading it again and still getting new things out of it.

I tried. I worked. I read and read. I thought about it. I stuck it out and I finished the dratted thing, like the good little ex-Catholic guilty girl I guess that I am. Yet I have NO IDEA what it's supposed to mean, or what it's about, or why in heck it won the vaunted Man Booker prize.Eleanor Catton is a very skilled writer, as is evident from the first eloquent page. But I feel like she's writing to show off how good she is, how complicated she can make a story, and her admittedly research skills. I'm impressed with her fortitude, but in the end, I don't feel anything except kind of stupid for not understanding it, and for sticking it out when I clearly wasn't going to. Why all the astrological references and chapter headings? Why all of those male characters, utterly without charm, and their long dissertations about gold and australia. Why the icky bad guy couple with absolutely no redeeming qualities that might make them more interesting for readers? Why the endless elaborate "reveals" of details of when various events happened when I don't care a bit about WHAT happened, and less about the people it may or may not have happened to? Why the several lumbering plot twists that are telegraphed for 30 pages before they finally occur. No surprises, no characters i cared about in the least. Was my kindle edition missing critical pages? Did skipping the introduction mean I was doomed to flounder through the book like a 7-year-old reading the Sound and the Fury?And the final insult is that the mystery is never quite solved at the end of the 800 pages. I don't quite know what happened. Not much, as far as I can tell. I have read extremely long novels---love tolstoy, dickens, brontes, etc. This book is sort of trying to do that, but in a modern way, where nothing happens, or rather, the same series of not very interesting events is re-examined from multiple points of view.It's a great cure for insomnia.....other than that, if you're not obsessed with the Australian gold rush or astrology, I'd skip this one.

Long and unjustifiably so... So far (page 316) I’ve come to the conclusion that it simply does not warrant any further investment of my time or energy, because for me personally, it simply doesn’t feel worthwhile.I suspect that the stylistic prose became something of a distraction to author and editor alike (and perhaps those deciding on its status as Man Booker winner...?); its successful in that it feels authentic, but its major drawback (I think) is that it comes across as dispassionate and detached. It ultimately serves as a handsome gloss over what is (in my opinion) really quite a thin story with characters I don’t feel I’ve got to know that well and don’t feel inclined to potentially change that by ploughing on, and really don’t care much about them. What use is a masterful grasp of the language of the period if as modern readers we feel alienated by it, kept at arm’s length? Isn’t a key aim of historical fiction to help us access the inner world of characters so that despite any differences due to time and space etc they feel real and to an extent at least, relateable? At times I felt something for Catton’s (many, many) characters, but soon got bogged down in wordy prose and felt indifferent about their fates once again.Definitely a case of style over substance. Sadly Catton fails to truly engage and enthral, despite the considerable potential of both her subject matter and geographical setting. I won’t be continuing to read it as life already feels too short for all the wonderful stories I want to pack in. Wonderful because they both entertain, challenge and feed me. I know they exist because I have enjoyed so many already :) :)

For the most part I found it absorbing and enjoyable, if hard work. The end is lamentable however. After all that detail it seems to collapse completely with endless summaries of what happened –really poor. Also, no doubt the astrology had some significance but it was hard to see what that was without being able to read the charts. I think structures and devices became secondary to the characters sometimes as they were often lengthily described by their internal processes rather than by means of dialogue. For such a long book it does not contain much dialogue. All the loose ends are not tied up and I am still puzzled as to whether Staines was the man in the crate on the ship –no real explanation of that is given. There is a huge amount of coincidence in the book. All these intertwined characters seem to end up in the same small part of the world which is unlikely. The character of Anna is never truly described although all the men seem to be in love with her. When she does speak there isn't that much to her. Since she is so central to the book I think she could have been fleshed out much more.

I really enjoyed the first part of this book. It is quite an intricate plot with many characters and you really need to concentrate on what you're reading. As I don't usually get to read in significant "chunks", I used audible (whisper sync) to help me progress or I am sure that I would have lost my way and my enthusiasm. ( I thought that it was a very good recording, by the way.) The historical language was immensely evocative and I think that audible helped to reinforce this.And then it all went wrong. At the point at which I was really looking forward to solving some of the mysteries, it was as if Ms Catton had had enough and didn't know what to do next. From chapters hours long, there were one page chapters where most of the action was summarised in the synopsis ("in which so and so does such and such and mr somebody leaves ....."). Most of it recapping things we already knew from one character or another but not answering some of the fundamental questions. Or, by this time, I had completely lost the plot and missed something crucial. I really wanted to make it clear and realised that I would have to reread the last bit of the book to see if it clarified more than I realised. But then decided that I just couldn't be bothered ...... Such a shame! Would I recommend the book? No, I wouldn't. I could so almost recommend it but would not like to put someone else through the disappointment that makes me feel that I have wasted my time.

Complex novel which needs 100% concentration all the time - not easy with a novel of 800 pages written in a leisurely, discursive style as a pastiche of a Victorian thriller. The story itself is absolutely fascinating and the author has clearly done a huge amount of research. The setting is the mid 19th century gold rush in New Zealand and the harshdesperate, mainly greedy lives of the gold seekers is brilliantly evoked. My problem with the structure of the novel was that it was very hard to keep the convoluted story in mind long enough to remember who and what the writer was talking about, from one 100 pages to another. Half way through there is a resume of the plot and characters, and I was mightily relieved to read it. The other is the mock Victorian style of writing which is, inevitably, somewhat arch and self-conscious. But very well done within these constraints. I do recommend this novel, it kept my attention and admiration despite a few misgivings, and you can't say fairer than that.

Yes, it’s very well written, if you like your 21st century authors to emulate their 19th century predecessors. And yes it’s well researched, but quite hard work. And not just because it’s so long- not only in terms of its number of pages (800), but also because it can take 30 pages for the author to get to the point, or rather to the point of one of her (too) many characters, and often to finally reveal something which is not that interesting in the first place. There are way too many characters, often not characterised enough, so you keep on forgetting their story line as it goes. In any case, none of them is that likeable (including the “good” ones). More worryingly still, there is really not that much happening that’s really exciting and makes you want to keep going- which is all the more disappointing given the premises (gold rush, opium-addicted prostitutes, evil traffickers, machiavellian femme fatale...) So while the author is undeniably talented, this book for me was way too long and unnecessarily complicated, to make it really entertaining.