The Luminaries in Reading with Style

Sep 10, 2013 Joy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, own, 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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Feb 21, 2014 Megan added it

Shelves: crime-mystery-suspense, historical-fiction, fiction

The solar system that Catton puts into motion here felt complete, from the beginning of the book to the end. I was ridiculously delighted by the narration; omniscient POV works so well when authors are explicit that destiny is a force at work in their novel's universe, and Catton didn't disappoint. The character descriptions were gorgeous and purposeful, and the plot was gleefully twisty and Victorian.

"Yes," the boy cried, "because I must! True feeling is always circular--either circular, or par

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Oct 19, 2013 GONZA rated it liked it

This book was tiring to read. The plots were woven between them and the characters continued to bond with each other in strange ways.
The central two hundred pages have been rather boring, but I devoured the last 300, I wanted answers, to understand what had happened, I had to know who killed and why, and I was disappointed. Despite some doubts have dissolved, nor were others and I do not think that the author has plans to write a sequel, and even if she were I would not read it.
The next time I ...more

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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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