When people say this book is a masterpiece I can only agree.
DETAILS
Title: The Luminaries
Author: Eleanor Catton
Publisher: Granta Books
Publication Date: 2013
Genre: Historical fiction
Page Count: 848
This year on bookstagram I am co-hosting a big books book club called the #abouttome book club (because it is about time those tomes were off our tbrs)! Each month we are reading a book of 500 plus pages. Last month the book club pick was this sumptuous but intimidatingly sized man booker prize winner. I can understand why people might not get on with this novel. It is a tricky read which requires a great deal of time and concentration but I was blown away by Catton’s skill at weaving such an intricately detailed and strangely addictive story.
You often hear the saying ‘the plot thickens’, well, within Catton’s novel the plot well and truly does thicken and not only that; the plot constantly splits and amalgamates adding different nuances with each chapter. Just like floating upon a meandering river, the reader is swept along by the slow-paced narrative. However, there are several undercurrents so subtle that you don’t immediately realise they are there until Catton decides to reveal things at a later point.
Written in the style of a Victorian sensation novel, each chapter is preceded by a short summary reflecting the format of a serialised novel. Set in New Zealand during the 1860s gold rush the book opens with a series of mysterious events that have transpired on a January night. A man dies in his house leaving behind a fortune in pure gold that nobody knew he had, a young investor vanishes without a trace, and a local prostitute is thought to have attempted to commit suicide. Twelve men find themselves implicated and meet in a deserted bar to discuss the events. However, this is not your typical murder mystery.
In the first section of the novel, the reader is confronted with the events of that January night from the perspectives of each of the twelve men gathered in the bar. This takes almost four hundred pages! The subsequent sections reveal events as they unfold for the next few weeks, again from the perspectives of all involved. To do this Catton deploys an omniscient third-person narrator which dips in and out of the perspectives of all of the characters. Therefore, at times the book can be difficult to follow especially as the narrative flicks backwards and forwards in time whilst weaving in and out of the multiple perspectives. Although I found this structure to be difficult at the start, the further in I got I found that each segment reveals connections between the characters and adds another level of detail which I found to be really satisfying. You think you finally know what has happened but then in the next segment you see events from another character’s perspective and you are back to square one again!
Astrology plays an important part in this novel. Each character is aligned with a different astrological sign which impacts how they react to events and other characters. Additionally, each chapter title reveals changes in the positioning of the planets which in turn impacts the decisions of the characters in different ways. Not knowing much about astrology most of this was lost on me, unfortunately. But the sense that their lives, actions and past has been influenced by something much bigger, something akin to fate was not.
In addition to the twelve men in the bar, there are several additional characters which also have a huge impact upon events so the cast of characters is fairly large. However, not all of the characters were developed equally. Whilst you get a great deal of insight into the backstories of some of the characters others seemed very much on the periphery even though they had important roles within the novel. Additionally, only two of the central characters were women so it is a very male-centric novel. Obviously, this is partly due to the setting but seeing as the majority of the action takes place in a town I would assume that there would have been more than two women there.
Overall, I think this book would be perfect for fans of The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry or anyone who loves to solve a mystery. However, just as a river does not naturally stop abruptly with a definitive ending this book does leave some things unanswered. So if you enjoy things to be completely tied up then you may be slightly disappointed.
I recently just read The Essex Serpent and really liked it. This is definitely high in my TBR for this year. Lovely review!
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Thank you! Yes the Essex Serpent is brilliant! I need to read her new one but I just haven’t gotten round to it yet!
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[…] last week, nothing! However, I do have a review of The Luminaries up now which took me ages to write because the book itself is massive and very […]
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[…] Beth wrote an eloquent review of The Luminaries, which sounds so good! […]
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Thank you so much for this! I love these blog wrap up posts and I’m going to check out some of these blogs immediately!
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Great review. Yes, The Luminaries is a masterpiece. I would have liked the author to rewrite the ending and make the whole “design” and meaning of it all more understandable, but I enjoyed it as it is too. It was particularly interesting for me “to follow” the gold and I like that with each repeated reading one may discover something new, as well as interpret certain situations differently.
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yes the ending did bug me a bit! But i loved how well crafted the rest of the story was and it was so interesting to see the perspective of nearly all the characters involved.
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Thank you so much for your great review! The Luminaries has been on my TBR for ages but for the past couple of months I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I love tomes and as soon as I’m done reading all the ARCs and classics for university, I am going to dive deep into this one. I have never read a book set in New Zealand before, so this will be a great adventure!
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aww thank you for your lovely comment! I’ve never read anything set in New Zealand before either so it was cool to go there by book! I think you do need to invest some time to it though as it is a massive novel but well worth it!
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Thank for your advice! I’ll definitely pick it up when my schedule is finally free 😌
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