The Luminaries in Reading with Style

Jun 27, 2013 Juniper rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013-books, canadian, women-write-big-books, owned

jeez!!! holy smokes, you guys!!

i finished this book nearly a week ago now and have been struggling so hard with my thoughts on it. i didn't love it and i didn't dislike it, but there's something i just can't quite put my finger on here, that made the book feel kind of off for me. i had been anticipating this read so, so much, so i definitely feel disappointed. i don't think my expectations were sky-high and impossible though. i have not yet read catton's first novel, The Rehearsal, though i do o jeez!!! holy smokes, you guys!!

i finished this book nearly a week ago now and have been struggling so hard with my thoughts on it. i didn't love it and i didn't dislike it, but there's something i just can't quite put my finger on here, that made the book feel kind of off for me. i had been anticipating this read so, so much, so i definitely feel disappointed. i don't think my expectations were sky-high and impossible though. i have not yet read catton's first novel, The Rehearsal, though i do own it. so my excitement was not based on already being a big fan from her previous work. i think my expectations were mostly based on the book's setting - i really have not read very much new zealand-based fiction, and then the chunk-factor was running high for me -- it's a big, fat novel, 800+ pages. YAY!!

i did really enjoy when the book focused on the location and described the settings. that was probably my favourite bit.

but this book is, i think, more complicated than it needs to be. when i say complicated...i don't mean hard or challenging. there are a lot of characters (20 of them) and a thread of plot is woven through each one. they are all tied together by a single plot point. this is fine -- the characters are distinct enough and interesting enough that they aren't confusing. but to stretch out one single aspect of any novel, for more than 800 pages...well, it's a lot. the narrative is non-linear. i am fine with that. and as much as i love big, fat books...i think this book could have been amazing if 200-300 pages were edited out. there were definitely times when i felt like i was just reading padding and imaging what might have been in a tighter telling?

there is a bit of a gimmick going on too, with over-informative chapter introductions, (for example: chapter titled "Mercury in Aquarius": "In which Moody passes on some vital information, and Sook Yongsheng presents him with a gift." which is a less informative example, to avoid spoilers for you all...but you get the idea.) astrological signs and stellar & planetary phases. for me, this aspect of the story was a bit too much telling from the author. i understand the intros to each chapter may be borrowing from victorian lit., but it didn't add to the novel. in fact, it served to irritate me and i tended to skip over them, then read them once i had finished a chapter. re: astrological signs and moon phases: the characters were well-drawn, we were able to gain a solid picture of what they were each about without the padding from their star signs. i think i get what catton was aiming for in this purposeful choice - some characters are represented in the 'stellar' phase of the novel and others are 'planetary'. one man = dry land/earth. there are 12 related houses (settings) and 7 related influences (reason, desire, force, command...) how much in life is based on internal forces/choices and how much is external/fate? but it just didn't work for me. it was a bit twee.

so...since finishing the read, i have been reading many, many reviews for the book, trying to wrap my head around my own thoughts and feelings. overwhelmingly, this book is loved. the critics are a-gushing. of course, if you follow these things, the luminaries ~~was~~ ~~longlisted~~ ~~shortlisted~~ won the 2013 booker prize. so i am glad i read this one. as the book becomes more widely read, i will be interested to hear what others think.
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Sep 10, 2013 Joy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: own, favorites, 5-star, 2014, literary-fiction, historical-fiction

Catton crafts a tale that is a delight to read. She beautifully captures the voices of the Victorian era to create an intricate plot that keeps you turning pages (all 834 of them!).

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Aug 04, 2014 Laurie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: booker-prize, canadian, kindle, own

I started out thinking that this book was a 4 star–pushing 4.5 star read. The more I read about the underlying structure, and the incredibly inventive and intricate way that Catton has woven the astrological thematic frame of the book into both the structure and the story, the closer it creeps to 5 stars. Will I talk myself into changing my rating? (Spoiler: yes)

It has been described as Dickensian, with good reason, but Dickens could never have kept this many balls in the air—in a serial format, I started out thinking that this book was a 4 star–pushing 4.5 star read. The more I read about the underlying structure, and the incredibly inventive and intricate way that Catton has woven the astrological thematic frame of the book into both the structure and the story, the closer it creeps to 5 stars. Will I talk myself into changing my rating? (Spoiler: yes)

It has been described as Dickensian, with good reason, but Dickens could never have kept this many balls in the air—in a serial format, it would have been impossible for the reader to keep all the characters straight (it was a challenge even reading it straight through. I kept the cast of characters page open on another device so I could reference it easily, something I have previously needed to do only for the Russians.) But there is no question that the 19th C. novel casts a long shadow over The Luminaries, both in its language and in some of the tropes it plays with and subverts. It also owes a debt to the murder mystery, but it is an extremely complex murder mystery, and the pacing of the story is not typical of the genre.

The pacing was the one quibble I had when first reading it; I thought that the beginning sections moved too slowly compared to the end. Again, when I learned a bit more about the frame for the novel, I softened on that position. The "golden ratio" of 2:1 is intimately bound to both the story and the structure, with each successive section being half the length of the previous one. Viewed in this light, I see the pace as deliberately accelerating, rather than inconsistent. I am still not convinced that the book could not have been shorter, but I am less convinced than I was that it ought to have been.

This book is extremely clever, but she writes so beautifully that her cleverness never becomes too much. I get more impressed with it the more I think about it, and it is going on the very short list of books I plan to re-read. There is just too much good symbolism to read this book for the story alone. So, yes, 5 stars.

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