The Luminaries

Oh my word. I have no idea where to begin with The Luminaries. It is amazingly complex, overwhelming, and a readable mystery all at the same time. I finished this 800 page tome and wondered what the heck I had just experienced. I’m not sure if that is a criticism or a compliment.

Set in Gold Rush era New Zealand of the 1860s, it begins with a young man’s arrival to a small back water town on the south island. Relaxing in a hotel lounge, he happens across a furtive gathering of 12 men from a mix of backgrounds, classes, and races, all reflecting the typical characters drawn by the lure of gold. They proceed to tell him a perplexing and entangled mystery about love, betrayal, lost gold, vengeance, and death.

The difficulty of the story is that they are each telling their version (or piece) of the tale. No one in this novel can tell you exactly what happened; they can only give their snapshots. So the text can move slowly at times. You read a couple hundred pages and realize you haven’t gotten far in comprehending the story. By the time I reached the end I had almost stopped caring … almost.

Another issue I had is that there are many characters and several of the voices get lost (or I just mixed them up). There is the young man (Moody), the 12 men in the lounge all who play a side part, and then the 7 primary characters around whom the story mainly revolves. Some of the 12 are really well defined characters with interesting perspectives, especially Tom Balfour, Moody, and Aubert Gascoigne, but the rest blend together in Victorian man character-ness. The two women, Lydia and Anna, stand out much more, however, which is good because they are strong and interesting characters. Overall, though, it seems like the number of characters is more a technique than a necessity.

And speaking of technique, a review must mention the structure of the book, which Catton bases on astrology. There I mentioned it … because lord knows I didn’t get it. For a concise explanation see Elizabeth Knox’s launch speech. The part that makes sense is that each chapter is half the size of the previous. According to Knox, this leads to momentum in the story. Yeah. Well. So does reading a griping story.

Anyway, fabulous historical and literary fiction and certainly worth the time needed to finish it. The story and characters are engaging even if you don’t know a thing about astrology. I may still think TransAtlantic should have won the Man Booker Prize, but I concede this was a special book of 2013.