Book Thoughts: The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sometimes a book makes it onto your to-read list because of certain accolades, like being short-listed for the Man Booker, and then before you get around to reading it, it ends up winning said award, and then you read and are not sure you are capable of reviewing it. In some respects, Catton's "The Luminaries" is that book for me. The book made it on my to-read list shortly after it came out a couple years ago upon seeing it on the Man Booker short-list, and its been waiting on my Kindle for me to read almost ever since. It waited, in part, because my experience with lengthy (Catton's work is over 800 pages here) award winning books is that they tend to be immersive and intense reads, and I never felt quite up to it. I finally took the plunge a little while ago, and as expected for a book that won the Man Booker, it was worth it.

The setting for the book is in 19th century New Zealand during a gold rush, and the book begins with a "council" of 12 or 13 men in the Crown Hotel in a coastal town. These 12 men (and the 13th, Walter Moody, who happens to be there by happenstance), are all trying to unravel a mystery surrounding other certain characters in the book. The time and length that Catton gives to each of these characters profile, and what leads to them the Crown Hotel at the beginning of the novel, is a strength of the novel. Catton methodically and purposefully builds each character's background while simultaneously adding to the plot and the mystery, all while maintain excellent pacing that keeps the book, for the most part, a page turner. In the process, Catton explores the concept of truth in relation - of how truth is (can be) dependent on one's relation or perspective to certain events. Thus, as we learned more about each character at that council of men at the Crown Hotel, the reader gets additional layers of complexity and reality added to the plot and the mystery that drives the novel.

However, as the book progresses, certain of the characters at the beginning fade to the background and have little to no role in concluding the book. In some cases, this isn't a huge deal. But in others, for certain characters, after the time invested in learning their back stories, as a reader, you miss them a bit at the end. This may also be because of how the book ends, or, doesn't end. If I had one serious criticism of the book it is that it gets almost too long-winded, like it doesn't know how to end itself. The unraveling of the mystery and the primary climactic points of the plot occur with about 25% (or 200 pages) worth of book left. While those pages do add further context to the events at the beginning of the novel (as they go back to the prior year in keeping with the astrology cycle that frames the novel's structure), I'm not sure how much overall value they add to the novel.

That said, this is a book I can see myself reading again. Knowing how the story plays out, I think, would lead me to reading the first parts of the novel differently - looking for certain clues and interpreting certain character's actions differently. It is not lost on me that such plays into and supports Catton's them of relational truth. But since I believe that to be such a strength of the book, and an intentional act by the author, I think it would be interesting to read the book again with a different perspective. Also, it'd be interesting to read the book keeping in mind the book's structure and what role Catton intended it to play. The first chapter is the longest, and each chapter gets progressively shorter throughout the novel. This obviously helps with pacing, but reading with these facts may also reveal something else about the book that was missed the first time. In addition, Catton's prose is striking, and you combine that with the scope of the plot and the ability to cultivate characters, and it is easy to understand why the book got the accolades it did.

Take all that together, and despite any criticism I would have the book, it is a book I am immensely happy that I read, and one I look forward to reading again; any book you can say that about has to be pretty good.


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