I very rarely abandon books, but after struggling through more than three hundred pages of this exquisitely written yet unengaging historical mystery, I thought it was fair to call it quits.
I tend to be an optimist when it comes to books. I remember gritting my teeth through the first two hundred pages of China Miéville’s Iron Council, hoping that it would get better and my patience would be rewarded – and in the end, I was glad I stuck with it. After the promising beginning of The Luminaries gave way to tedium, I was still willing to persevere and give it a chance. At some point however, I just had to admit to myself that I didn’t feel like making through its remaining 500 pages, Booker Prize-winning novel or not.
It’s a pity because, at first glance, The Luminaries seems to have all the ingredients for me to get happily lost in it for hours: historical setting, perfectly crafted prose, witty narrating voice, a complex mystery that slowly reveals its many layers. As it begins, it appears to be the story of Walter Moody, a young man who, in 1866, arrives at Hokitika, a gold mining town in New Zealand’s South Island. On the first night at his hotel, he stumbles on a tense meeting of twelve men, who all gathered to discuss a series of unexplained local events: a disappearance of a wealthy man, an apparent attempted suicide, a found body, and the discovery of an enormous fortune. Moody’s own disturbing experience while onboard the ship taking him to Hokitika seems to be but one thread of an intricate tapestry that connects all these wildly different characters together.
I really can’t fault Catton’s novel on a technical level. It is intricately plotted and meticulously researched, bringing to life the New Zealand gold rush era, diggers, sailors, politicians, ladies of the night, Maoris and fortune seekers from China, establishments of ill virtue and opium dens. It is beautifully written in a sumptuous, sort of pseudo-Victorian style, with scope and ambition that’s to be admired. I was very impressed with Catton’s character introductions, the vivid physical descriptions and acute psychological insights revealing not just the characters’ interior but also the way they wish to be perceived by others.
And yet, the further I read on the less grip the novel had on me. I don’t mind dense books with a sprawling cast of characters, but I was left with a strange feeling that the characters were becoming less substantial and more like shadows the more I read about them, when by all rights it should be the opposite. The same could be said about the setting: instead of getting more immersed in 19th-century Hokitika, I felt it growing more distant. There’s a weird hollowness and lack of real heart and soul to this book which makes it hard to connect with.
I gathered that there’s a unique astrological angle to the novel and its construction, and I still do love the book cover with its imagery of waning moon. I’m afraid though that this cleverness is lost on me when my interest is likewise waned. I don’t know if I can even be bothered to look up the plot summary and explanation of the mystery on Wikipedia.
yggdrasille.com 