Customer Reviews

The Luminaries (Unabridged)

The Luminaries is a tale of lies and deceit, fraud and vengeance, set amongst the goldfields of Western New Zealand in the 1860s. It was a time when men had dreams of getting rich very quickly based as much on luck as on hard work. But just as some are content to rely on the odds, others are willing to change the odds in their favour by nefarious means.

So when Walter Moody, a recent Scottish émigré, accidentally gatecrashes a clandestine meeting of twelve local businessmen, he is drawn into their various shady dealings. There is gold lost and found; a missing man; a dead drunk; a suicidal prostitute and a very sinister, scar-faced sea captain. There are tensions between the white settlers and the Chinese camp. Oh, and there is a token Maori. The writing, for the most part, is really good. The setting is conveyed well and the reader feels fully transported through space and time into a complex and authentic world.

But, and it's a big But, the involvement of so many players makes the novel far too complicated and grinds the pace down to a glacial speed. Every player has to have a relationship with each of the other players, resulting in many events being played out multiple times from multiple perspectives. Moreover, the use of reportage to create a non-linear time structure heightens the feeling of repetition. When it seems that the novel has finally moved on, it gets brought back again and again and again. The twelve main characters are supposed to represent different signs of the zodiac and perhaps those who like astrology would recognise their traits and interactions. But for the lay reader, the characters seem rather indistinguishable and, frankly, not much more than a personification of their job. The novel may be long (830ish pages) but is so full of plotting that there is little real space for characterisation. This can result in people forming alliances or breaking pacts for no obvious reason. We find out what people do, but have little insight into why they do them. OK, some of the main players (apparently the planetary and terra firma characters) have some slight backstory, but the others (the stellar ones) simply are as they are.

The pace does pick up eventually - after about two thirds of the novel - but what is not apparent from the page count is that this is actually the denouement. The many subsequent sections seem to be some kind of zodiacal obligation telling the reader nothing new and presenting historical events that had already been inferred. Moreover, as the sections wend their way to an end, the brief introductions to the chapters (as one finds in Victorian novels) grow longer and start to carry information in their own right, leaving the body of the section to carry only snippets of mercurial dialogue. This was necessary because each section had to be exactly half the length of the previous one (count the words if you don't believe me). This really is not a satisfactory way to end a plot-driven novel of this length.

I am sure there is a good story buried somewhere in The Luminaries. But just like the thin person struggling to emerge from every fat person, sometimes dieting in not enough and bariatric surgery is needed.

My dominant feeling on finishing this book was one of self-congratulation in actually having made it to the end. I have joined the elite band of readers who have done so, but I have not made it to the super-elite group who not only finished it, but understood it (but then I wonder if there are many at all in this category).
Normally, I would give Booker-prizewinners a wide berth, fearing over-intellectualism and incomprehensible story lines, but here was one with a crime/mystery theme, and by a New Zealand author, and I'm a NZer myself so, here we go...
For the first 150 pages, I thought my Booker prejudices were validated: hard going, put-downable, especially when I considered the hundreds of pages still to come. But I stuck with it and, very gradually, I found myself getting drawn in, with a mounting curiosity as to where it was going (as one might hope with a mystery). Things were looking up! (aided, I should say, means of one of the characters providing a 2-3 page summary of the story so far at the end of Part I, some 350 pages in - very helpful, this, you can look forward to it). And so on to the full 827 pages, but, after all that, to a damp-squibbish ending. Was that it? - after all that?
Notwithstanding the critics' accolades, I dare to say I can't understand how this story can be highly rated. The book is far, far, too long, moving at a glacial pace; the story is stupifyingly complex, propped up with far too many coincidental events and long-shot chance happenings; then there's the sleight-of-hand techniques such as two characters having the same name (or was it one character having two names? - can't remember, it's gone); and don't get me started on the resolution of the "missing bullet" saga - I'll keep this from you. Is this really award-winning stuff?
For me, the star of the book is the town of Hokitika and, in this aspect, I am fulsome in my praise for Catton's description of the era of the 19th-century gold rush in NZ's South Island, particularly on the West Coast; it's highly informative and enjoyable in that respect. It's a pity it's taken such a cumbersome vehicle to convey this.

After reading some of the reviews of this book, I thought they either read something else or I was not reading the Luminaries.
My feeling’s on finishing this book was one of self-congratulation in actually having made it to the end. The panel that judged this book as a Booker prizewinner ought to be dismissed. This was one of the worst books I have ever read, the first 200 pages was pure waffle and could have been condensed to 20 pages. It is a book that you could put down and never pick up again.
As I read on, there was some interesting bits and I thought could have been made into a good story if it was better written. The overall storyline was good but very disjointedly put together. Having continued to read the book and become a little interested in the characters the end of the book is a real let down. This book is far too long and could easily have been cut to about 400 pages, which would probably still be too long.
The only redeeming factor was the description of the 19th century gold rush in New Zealand’s South Island’s west coast.

What a dreadful, long and boring book that re-tells the same story over and over with such limited characterisation and scene setting that there is nothing to draw one into the story or relate to any of the characters. A real disappointment; I had to force myself to finish it, and when I did, the ending was nugatory.

This book is dull. I tried my best to get through it without falling asleep and failed on each occasion. The writing is unnecessarily convoluted in both its plotting and the way in which the plot is expressed. The characters are not engaging on any level. The writing style had me fighting to keep my eyes open within minutes. I am amazed anybody could stick with this to the end. I am sorry to say I gave up and dropped it off at the book depository after 300 pages. This is one of only 3 books I have not finished in my 35 years on this earth! Everybody should avoid like the plague - you are simply wasting your time.

It is very long. There are too many characters most of whom I found neither particularly interesting or memorable. The plot wasn't particularly gripping either. Despite these reservations I persevered and finished the book ; however I remained sadly unilluminated as to the scale of this books reception ! My advice is if you don't like this book after having read the first 50 pages or so - don't waste your time - give up now !

I am amazed so many people who, like me, were bored to tears with this book, managed to get as far as page 300. I have just given up at p100 or so, having struggled to wade through the most turgid of prose. Reading for pleasure, it goes without saying, should not be a chore and this book is incredibly hard work and totally unengaging.

Although long and involved, very well written and life like characters. Interesting historically in terms of the relationships that are formed in fairly isolated conditions but linked to earlier times and situations so you gradually discover what the individuals are like and can guess what happens to them . The story also shows why they behave as they do and so that you are reluctant for the story to come to an end even after such a long read. The pace quickens towards the end so the last part can be read much more quickly than the first. Though it might be possible to cut some passages it's hard to know exactly which ones and Eleanor Catton manages to move on just as the reader wonders when this will happen. A very godd read.

It's a while since I've read such a lengthy book with such a labyrinthine plot. I confess, at times I was confused and gave up trying to hold all the pieces together in my head and just enjoyed the story as it unfolded, which is nevertheless a rich enjoyment, here. Catton does several things incredibly well in this novel: moving her plot along; narrative structure; dialogue; and reader engagement. The plotting is rather obviously the standout achievement (even if at times I let it get away from me), however the intricate way the plot is constructed around the 12 + characters, each of whom has their own part to play and own history to bring, which intermingles with the influence of the characters, is brilliant. I wasn't so sure, though, about the zodiacal conceit. Not really sure what exactly that adds, or whether it was just intended as frill. I must also admit to feeling that it ends rather more with w whimper than a bang, as several events we've already been told about earlier on in the book, are narrated again first-hand, as it were.

However, overall this is a very impressive novel and I would certainly recommend it. It's rare to come across a writer nowadays who attempts something like this, a big doorstop of a book with a Wilkie-Collins-esque maze of a plot.

It is not often I indulge in a Booker Prize winner yet the theme of this caught my eye and a few pages in I realised it was a mystery, bound in an enigma, caught in a puzzle. Those readers who love a good "whodunit", then this is of that ilk; yet, with that plot it is written in a manner that has echoes of Arthur Conan Doyle, it navigates precisely through the labyrinth of a Victorian-era New Zealand with a tenacity that has a style at once of a reporter, of a sleuth, and of a pseudo-arcane mystic.
It will be difficult to review this book without some spoilers, for that I apologize, and cease reading now if you are a lover of cryptic storylines. However, I shall limit them to as little impact as possible.
Eleanor Catton's novel, given her youth, is extraordinary. It commences in a tawdry room on a rain lashed, dark night with the arrival in Hokitia of one Walter Moody. The author sets the tone of her narrative quickly: heavy on description, both physical and character, perturbed in tone, curious in ear. He has come across a séance of men, a gathering of interested parties, a conclave of hubris; maybe, even, a smoking party after a Last Supper. For the first half of this long novel Walter hears the tales from each of the men, leading us to why they are gathered in that place. The author capably shows us how half-heard truths, mistranslations, partial information, flawed personalities...all can lead to a story that, as Reverend Devlin Cowell puts it so very late in the text:
"never underestimate how extraordinarily difficult it is to understand a situation from another person's point of view."
It is precisely this that is the technical pivot of the novel; for without the affair in Hokitia would be as bright and gleaming as the nuggets of gold that are the cause of so much intrigue, murder, despair, reconciliation, failed dreams.
I confess about a third of the way in I started to make a note of all the characters, fearful of becoming lost in the turns of the narrative; fortuitously I discovered that the author gives a conclusion to the events that led to the meeting on January 16 by the time we are mid-novel. As I looked around the characters of Aubert Gascoigne (Magistrate's Clerk), Edgar Clinch (landlord of the Gridiron Hotel), Dick Mannering (owner of "The Princes of Wales Opera House" and various claims), Thomas Balfour (shipping magnate), Reverend Devlin Cowell, Te Rau Tauwhare (Maori friend of Crosbie Wells), Charlie Frost (banker), Joseph Pritchard (local drug emporium owner), Harald Nilssen (commissioning merchant), Benjamin Lowenthal (Jewish editor of "The West Coast Times"), Quee Long (lone worker on the Aurora mine) and lastly (but not least), Sook Yongsheng (operator of the Kaniere opium den) - all of whom were gathered to discuss both the bizarre death of Crosbie Wells, a "hermit" found dead in his house at Arahura Valley, the disappearance of Emery Staines who was the "richest man in town, the fate of Anna Wetherell, a prized whore with Aurora mine stamped gold nuggets sewn in the seam of her dresses, and the strange comings and goings of the barque Godspeed with its villain of a Captain Carver - I saw how the author had based her novel around the concepts of greed, social placement, curiosity and (inevitably in such a small frontier town), six degrees of separation.
What follows would not be out of place in a Dickens novel as we work through the plots of all those named above plus Lydia Wells and George Shepard. We have multiple Magwiches, several Pips, a Nancy...with the supporting characters and ambiance you'd expect. What was a delight was Eleanor Catton's dalliance with Victor Hugo. For those who have read his epic tomes, he is much given over to lengthy asides, philosophizing at whim on any topic of the day. Whilst the author has not written a novel to compare with something like "Les Miserables", she does neatly indulge in such asides, giving us interesting and thought-provoking monologues on topics such as:
On prayer: "The prayerful man, the good man, is always hopeful; he is always an optimist. A man is made hopeful by his prayers."
On digger's law: "when the savage meets the civil."
On whoring:- "a whore cannot become respectable. A whore cannot become rich. All the prestige and the profit belong to the whoremonger, never to the whore."
On judgement: "For although a man is judged by his actions, by what he has said and done, a man judges himself by what he is willing to do, by what he might have said, or might have done - a judgement that is necessarily hampered, not only by the scope and limits of his imagination, but by the ever changing measures of his doubt and self-esteem."
On welfare: "Welfare is the very proof of civilization - it is its finest proof, indeed!"
On love: "new lovers would do little more than call to mind the old, and one would be forced to wander, lost, in that reflective maze of endless comparison, forever disappointed, forever turning back."
By the end of the novel I was sated and I applaud this Canadian/New Zealander on what she has achieved. It was a novel that made me think, entertained me, encouraged my love of "whodunits", educated me about an obverse Victorian society in New Zealand. Out of all it, though, came one hard memory of what the novel is all about...
"an assembly of innocent men - not of schemers, or conspirators, or felons of any kind. / You'll find a fair clutch of men have come out of this business feeling like there's someone to blame."
Yes indeed. There is someone to blame. Enjoy finding out whom.