The Luminaries in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Jan 26, 2014 Jeff Scott rated it it was amazing

Shelves: e-book, fiction, new-zealand-fiction, deceit

When first entering a new city, one can be instantly bombarded with people willing to help. People shout that they have the best taxi cab, best hotel in town, or to stop by their place to eat. It’s hard to know who to trust without any contacts or knowledge of the city. Take it a step further, enter into a lawless land where people are constantly swindled, betrayed, and murdered over gold and you have the bewildering novel that is Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries. People aren’t who they say they When first entering a new city, one can be instantly bombarded with people willing to help. People shout that they have the best taxi cab, best hotel in town, or to stop by their place to eat. It’s hard to know who to trust without any contacts or knowledge of the city. Take it a step further, enter into a lawless land where people are constantly swindled, betrayed, and murdered over gold and you have the bewildering novel that is Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries. People aren’t who they say they are, their story is incomplete, and only the reader has some clue to the whole story.

The story begins mid-way through. As Walter Moody enters the Crown hotel, he is met by 12 men who had planned to meet and share their information. All have been betrayed by a Francis Carver and all 12 tell their tale to Walter Moody. The first half of the book introduces each character, their connection to Carver and defined by their moon sign by the author. The tales are told in 19th century style with a dangerous storm opening the book (very Wuthering Heights), men telling their stories in turn (more like Cantebury Tales), and leaving in old-fashioned words like gaol for jail and crossed out swear words like d__d. It’s highly entertaining and the reader must be their own Sherlock Holmes to decipher the tale. Luckily, at the half-way point, the stories are summarized by Moody and we then begin the story in real time. As a side note, the book was recently picked up as a mini-series and I could see how this story could easily be woven into a “Lost” style television show providing a back-story to the character and how it relates to the current action.

I enjoyed the main themes of trust, identity, and perspective. It’s a puzzle to remember what character knows what information and when. The book seems intentionally complicated to highlight that fact. Do we really understand what is going on? Even as the reader is entitled to all the information, it seems some of the characters miss information or come to false conclusions leading a lot of confusion. Catton emphasizes this with the Chinese immigrants who only understand part of a story because of the language barrier and act on bad interpretation of that information. Each man’s story is only one perspective to be interpreted differently by 12 men. Furthermore, the author’s technique in regards to the characters is very clever. We sometimes don’t know who the character is, or if the character is who they say they are. We can’t see them to identify them and if the person says their name is Crosbie Wells, we have to decide to believe them or not. It demonstrates how easily it was to commit identify theft in 1860s New Zealand.

Lastly, the theme of trust is the one that stands out the most. Those coming off the boat to the gold fields cannot trust in the kindness of strangers. There are also those who aren’t on the level themselves and can’t yell for help without bringing fault to themselves.

The story seems to end about three quarters to end of the book as the grievance against Francis Carver is resolved, but the author takes us back through the stories filling in the gaps, reversing time and taking us around back to the beginning. It’s much like the moon signs in their rhythm. This is a very satisfying novel but it helps knowing that the technique is purposely complicated to emphasize its theme.

Favorite passages:
“Gold was not a treasure…Gold was like all capital in that it had no memory: its drift was always onward, away from the past.” P. 98
“When two codes of justice are available at once…a man will always use the one to inveigh against the other.” P. 123
For although a man is judged by his actions, but what he has said and done, a man judges himself by what he is willing to do, but what he might have said, or might have done—a judgment that is necessarily hampered, not only by the scope of limits of his imagination, but by the ever-changing measure of his doubt and self-esteem…p. 131
“…a man with no memory was a man with no foresight…” p. 232
Ah Sook thought later, that one’s gestures remain the same, even as the body changes, weathers, and gives itself over to age—as though the gestures were the real vessel, the vase to the body’s flower. P. 235
“If I have learned one thing from experience, it is this: never underestimate how extraordinarily difficult it is to understand a situation from another person’s point of view.” P. 546
“Here’s something you ought to know. There’s no charity in a gold town. If it looks like charity, look again.” P. 609

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