Review: The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

I have never had much luck with major award-winning books, and unfortunately, Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries (Booker Prize winner) didn't break my streak.

As I mentioned in a Thursday Tea post a couple of weeks ago, the novel takes place in 1866 in Hokitika, New Zealand, on the edges of the gold fields. On the first night Walter Moody, a Scotsman, arrives in town, he inadvertently crashes a secret meeting of twelve men who have gathered to untangle a series of interconnected mysteries involving death, disappearance, theft, false identity, women, opium, and hidden riches.

Moody is soon caught up in the men's stories, eventually revealing a few strange occurrences of his own. The novel is told in a nonlinear fashion and from a variety of viewpoints, and each individual episode reveals a bit of the truth behind one or more of the mysteries.

Catton choose a precise structure for her novel, in which the length of each part is consecutively and proportionally smaller, from the 360-page opener to the 2-page closer. In addition, each chapter within the parts is given an astrological title, which is (presumably) related to the events and people taking center stage in the ensuing text. Another clever bit has to do with the names of the people--for example, Mr. Frost is said to have spoken coolly, and Mr. Staines is described as being colorful.

There is a large cast of characters in The Luminaries, and no one, male or female, is without flaws. Each has arrived in Hokitika to make a new start, but no one is able to escape the past. Although I had trouble with the novel as a whole, Catton created complex and fascinating characters who were driven by personal demons.

Because the novel unfolds from different points of view and zigzags through time, we read about the same key events several times. Unfortunately, the repetition began to drag long before I reached page 830 (or rather hour 29), and although the characters were real enough, I soon lost interest in who (if anyone) was telling the truth and how the intertwined mysteries would eventually be solved. I can't help but wonder how many of the lengthy descriptions Catton would have cut if The Luminaries had been written with a looser structure. Were scenes and background stories included just to make sure each part had the correct number of pages?

I listened to the unabridged audiobook edition (Audible, Inc.; 29 hr, 14 min) narrated by Mark Meadows, whose pacing, accents, and characterizations kept me listening until the end. My full audiobook review will be available from AudioFile magazine.

Published by Hachette Book Group / Little, Brown 2013
ISBN-13: 9780316074315
Source: Review (see review policy)
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