The Luminaries

The Best Book In The world.It truly is. I just love it.A withered old man is dead, a whore is found unconscious on the street, a young man has disappeared, all on a single day of 14th of January 1866; & in between these miss-happenings ventures the enigmatic tale of fortunes gained and lost. To investigate these profoundly luring scenarios; 12 men, with such a myriad collection of origins and cultures (there’s also a vista of different languages of these people, but English been their lingua franca, is used in almost all of the conversations) that the reader is sure to be curious; assemble in the crown hotel, who are, to their dismay, interjected by a stranger who has arrived in the town that very morning. They are prompted to share their stories, which are, as it turns out, so much tangled into each other that it is not until the very end that the whole picture comes into the light.After the meeting at the Crown, the tale starts to take a pace and many of the mysteries of the first part are solved in the coming parts. The disappeared young prospector is found, but not until it’s too late. A fortune is rediscovered and by the time the story winds up, the main villain has been executed and the stranger has taken his step out, of a town still trying to engulf the recent proceedings.The full book is divided into 12 parts, with first part being the longest. It is the first part that appears to be running with a slow pace and in which the main storyline and the characters are developed. Its 12 individual chapters narrate the different stories of all of these men.A point worth mentioning here is that the principle story follows a period of about four months (from 27th January to 27th April of the 66th year of 19th century), which are comprised in the first 3 and a half parts and the other 8 and a half parts take us a year before and tell the story from then.Now, there’s another important underlying. All of the 12 men who gather for the discussion in the first chapter, have been each assigned a zodiac sign & there’s another set of 6 characters who have been assigned six different planets. Not only have these people the names of celestial objects, but they also act and interact in accordance with the nature of zodiacs they have been given. This literally is a feat seldom witnessed in any historical fiction.The author, Miss Eleanor Catton, details the characters and the backgrounds quiet vividly. The situations and the surroundings are very well described and almost all of the township’s architecture and planning is evident by the wordings. The novel’s descriptive nature and its ardent emphasis on behaviors of people is surely lucrative to one’s knowledge and understanding of the book and indeed helps to picture the character as a real human.Needless to say, the first thing that a reader catches in the book is the language. The use of Neo-Victorian English gives life to the story and makes one to delve into it. Since the time of the tale is the Victorian Era and since the town is also a colony of the British Empire; the use of this language makes for a golden match.This is feast for the one trying to get a book which is a both a mystery & a history, a tangled up mess of numerous accounts on the outside and yet a mesmerizing clear stream of water from the inside; an interwoven tale of murder, addiction, revenge on one hand and love, treasure, ambition on the other.Highly recommended and supremely enjoyed, a beauty to behold.(A map of 1866 Hokitika drawn by me has been enclosed)

The Granta Books 2013 edition, ISBN: 9781847088765. This edition is printed and bound in India. Although I’ve been disappointed time and again by the sub-standard quality of these editions for readers of the Indian sub-continent, I am glad to report that this one proves to be an exception. The typeface is neat and fairly large and legible. The quality of the spine and paper are also satisfactory.The Luminaries was awarded the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2013. Ms. Catton’s ambition is evident by the sheer size of the book: it’s a daunting 832 pages long. The novel begins promisingly, and a stupendous 360 pages are devoted to the first chapter alone. The chapter is amazingly focused and serves to introduce us to the various players and their intertwining storylines in the year 1866 in the New Zealand goldfields. Walter Moody has just disembarked from a boat and interrupts a council of twelve men at a hotel in the town of Hokitika. The council has assembled because of the following incidents: a wealthy man has vanished, a prostitute has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Walter Moody is soon drawn into the mystery.I found the first chapter the most tedious but also the most engrossing part of the book. It lays the groundwork of the plot and reveals partially the motives for the actions of the various players. Some readers might find the dearth of female characters in the novel a bit shocking, owing to the fact that the author happens to be a woman. The explanation for this is quite an ordinary one, and one, which I presume, is based in fact: New Zealand was a frontier country and populated predominantly by men seeking to make their fortunes in the goldfields.The novel picks up pace in the second-half, and I literally galloped through the last quarter of it.Ms. Catton employs what I like to call the (clever) Christopher Nolan-style of editing. The method can be described like this: the story is not inherently a mystery but appears to be so because the events are presented to the reader in a back and forth manner (present, past, present, past - 3, 1, 4, 2, 7, 5, 8, 6, etc.).The prose is written in a verbose manner that pays homage to Dickens’ novels, and it appears as if Ms. Catton imbibed the whole dictionary of the English language. Indeed, the prose is quite virtuosic by modern standards and one can’t help but marvel at some of the beautifully composed paragraphs. The plot might appear dense but I never once lost track because there are recapitulations that are contrived through the medium of dialogue; the plot only appears dense because of the aforementioned non-linear Nolan-esque structure that Ms. Catton chooses to employ in the telling of the tale. Oh, and by the way, having any sort of knowledge of astrology is not a prerequisite. The astrological charts appearing at the beginning of each chapter are a superfluous, but an ingenious bit of gimmickry. I recommend this for novices and seasoned readers alike with the caveat that “there is no accounting for taste.”

I DID IT! I FINISHED THIS GIGANTIC 848 PAGE BOOK!Let us just say that this is not a book for the weak. It needs bravado to pick up a book this size, that also after knowing it is historical fiction. A genre that is not preferred by many.But one thing is sure if you muster up enough courage to pick it up and start reading, you would be hooked from the word go. The story line pulls you in and then you become so engrossed in the book that you just do not want it to end.I kept reading page after page not knowing how the story is going to turn out. The twists, the turns take you to an ending that is just unexpected. The brilliance of this book is just when you have finally figured out in your head how the story is going to come about, something or the other takes place and all your theories are flushed down the gutter..I just LOVE when that happens!

Was itching to add this book to my library for many years now।Finally।The best part of the book is the premise and the subjugation of the personalities in the story . The characters are well developed , took a lot of time to get into the story with so many characters involved , but , once it paced up , there's no turning back from this one .Eleanor cutton is a master storyteller . Deserved winner .

I was happy that I got this Booker Winner so cheap.Expectedly, the copy was well handled. There was dirt smudges on the covers, bit dented in the corners.Paper quality was good. Yet to read

Long and unjustifiably so... So far (page 316) I’ve come to the conclusion that it simply does not warrant any further investment of my time or energy, because for me personally, it simply doesn’t feel worthwhile.I suspect that the stylistic prose became something of a distraction to author and editor alike (and perhaps those deciding on its status as Man Booker winner...?); its successful in that it feels authentic, but its major drawback (I think) is that it comes across as dispassionate and detached. It ultimately serves as a handsome gloss over what is (in my opinion) really quite a thin story with characters I don’t feel I’ve got to know that well and don’t feel inclined to potentially change that by ploughing on, and really don’t care much about them. What use is a masterful grasp of the language of the period if as modern readers we feel alienated by it, kept at arm’s length? Isn’t a key aim of historical fiction to help us access the inner world of characters so that despite any differences due to time and space etc they feel real and to an extent at least, relateable? At times I felt something for Catton’s (many, many) characters, but soon got bogged down in wordy prose and felt indifferent about their fates once again.Definitely a case of style over substance. Sadly Catton fails to truly engage and enthral, despite the considerable potential of both her subject matter and geographical setting. I won’t be continuing to read it as life already feels too short for all the wonderful stories I want to pack in. Wonderful because they both entertain, challenge and feed me. I know they exist because I have enjoyed so many already :) :)

For the most part I found it absorbing and enjoyable, if hard work. The end is lamentable however. After all that detail it seems to collapse completely with endless summaries of what happened –really poor. Also, no doubt the astrology had some significance but it was hard to see what that was without being able to read the charts. I think structures and devices became secondary to the characters sometimes as they were often lengthily described by their internal processes rather than by means of dialogue. For such a long book it does not contain much dialogue. All the loose ends are not tied up and I am still puzzled as to whether Staines was the man in the crate on the ship –no real explanation of that is given. There is a huge amount of coincidence in the book. All these intertwined characters seem to end up in the same small part of the world which is unlikely. The character of Anna is never truly described although all the men seem to be in love with her. When she does speak there isn't that much to her. Since she is so central to the book I think she could have been fleshed out much more.

I really enjoyed the first part of this book. It is quite an intricate plot with many characters and you really need to concentrate on what you're reading. As I don't usually get to read in significant "chunks", I used audible (whisper sync) to help me progress or I am sure that I would have lost my way and my enthusiasm. ( I thought that it was a very good recording, by the way.) The historical language was immensely evocative and I think that audible helped to reinforce this.And then it all went wrong. At the point at which I was really looking forward to solving some of the mysteries, it was as if Ms Catton had had enough and didn't know what to do next. From chapters hours long, there were one page chapters where most of the action was summarised in the synopsis ("in which so and so does such and such and mr somebody leaves ....."). Most of it recapping things we already knew from one character or another but not answering some of the fundamental questions. Or, by this time, I had completely lost the plot and missed something crucial. I really wanted to make it clear and realised that I would have to reread the last bit of the book to see if it clarified more than I realised. But then decided that I just couldn't be bothered ...... Such a shame! Would I recommend the book? No, I wouldn't. I could so almost recommend it but would not like to put someone else through the disappointment that makes me feel that I have wasted my time.

Complex novel which needs 100% concentration all the time - not easy with a novel of 800 pages written in a leisurely, discursive style as a pastiche of a Victorian thriller. The story itself is absolutely fascinating and the author has clearly done a huge amount of research. The setting is the mid 19th century gold rush in New Zealand and the harshdesperate, mainly greedy lives of the gold seekers is brilliantly evoked. My problem with the structure of the novel was that it was very hard to keep the convoluted story in mind long enough to remember who and what the writer was talking about, from one 100 pages to another. Half way through there is a resume of the plot and characters, and I was mightily relieved to read it. The other is the mock Victorian style of writing which is, inevitably, somewhat arch and self-conscious. But very well done within these constraints. I do recommend this novel, it kept my attention and admiration despite a few misgivings, and you can't say fairer than that.

Yes, it’s very well written, if you like your 21st century authors to emulate their 19th century predecessors. And yes it’s well researched, but quite hard work. And not just because it’s so long- not only in terms of its number of pages (800), but also because it can take 30 pages for the author to get to the point, or rather to the point of one of her (too) many characters, and often to finally reveal something which is not that interesting in the first place. There are way too many characters, often not characterised enough, so you keep on forgetting their story line as it goes. In any case, none of them is that likeable (including the “good” ones). More worryingly still, there is really not that much happening that’s really exciting and makes you want to keep going- which is all the more disappointing given the premises (gold rush, opium-addicted prostitutes, evil traffickers, machiavellian femme fatale...) So while the author is undeniably talented, this book for me was way too long and unnecessarily complicated, to make it really entertaining.