<p>^^^</p>
<p>This link may help: <a href=“Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries, reviewed.”>http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2013/10/eleanor_catton_s_the_luminaries_reviewed.html</a></p>
<p>I didn’t notice any spoilers.</p>
<p>Greetings all. Dizzy from all the new changes on this website!
Saw that a couple avid book discussion members have created new screen names- yeeks! Confusion! </p>
<p>I’ve missed the last couple discussions because I’ve been preoccupied with my 84 year old mother, who fell and broke her pelvis two months ago. Seven weeks in rehab, now with us, and on top of that she has been dealing with excrutiating shingles pain for the last two weeks.
Oh, it’s been quite a roller coaster of changes, and now this CC website to deal with- where is the " dislike" button. Too many changes in my " real" life and now in my " virtual" world as well. </p>
<p>By the way the last discussion was stellar. Carry on- and please not too many more name changes !!!</p>
<p>Waving at SJCM. I missed you. Glad you checked in.</p>
<p>SJCM, my mom and dad both had shingles in their 80’s. It’s awful! My dad—like your mom—contracted shingles right on the heels of several other painful health problems. It seemed so unfair. I remember saying to the doctor, “I can’t believe he got this in addition to all the other things he’s been dealing with.” The doctor said, “He didn’t get this in addition to all the other things he’s been dealing with; he got this because of all the other things.” Shingles seems to zero in on those whose resistance is low. I hope your mom feels better soon!</p>
<p>Hi SJCM, So nice to "see’ you! Sending comforting thoughts to your mom.</p>
<p>Hi SJCM, It sounds like you have had a couple of difficult months.I’m sorry your mom isn’t feeling well, but nice that you are able to take care of her. I hope you get a chance to post during the next discussion. Take care.</p>
<p>I finally managed to log back in, and my son helped me make an avatar. Yay! I am almost done going back through The Luminaries and taking notes. I had thought I would just skim the book, but I found revisiting the story to be surprisingly enjoyable, so I have actually been re-reading it.</p>
<p>Ignatius, I liked your slate.com review. I had not picked up on the fact that Anna is the sun and Emery is the moon, and that insight was…illuminating!</p>
<p>I just finished. It is a book that begs to be reread, but rereading is not something I want to do. I am looking forward to the discussion. Tomorrow is a busy day for me, so I may not be able to check in until Sunday.</p>
<p>Welcome to February and our discussion of The Luminaries! Here are a few questions from the Man Booker Prize site to get us started:</p>
<p>
</a> </p>
<p>I liked The Luminaries – perhaps it would be better to say that I had a great deal of respect for the work. It did not, however, enthrall me: I didn’t fall in love with any of the characters and although I closed the book on page 834 with a strong sense of satisfaction, I had no regret at leaving Catton’s world. </p>
<p>That said, I realize how brilliant the novel is, and I’m looking forward to hearing from everyone else. Astrologically speaking, there is a lot I didn’t understand. About the only thing I know about the zodiac is that I’m a Leo. :)</p>
<p>One thing that was interesting about the book was its details about mining, and shipping, and insurance, and journalism, and things like that. It brought the historical period into sharper focus, and it also showed how many of the concerns of people in that place and time were identical to those of our day.</p>
<p>After finishing The Luminaries, I read another historical novel about the New Zealand gold rush era. In that book, a married couple came from England with the thought of farming in eastern NZ, found it extremely daunting, and the husband became a prospector. </p>
<p>There were things I learned from the other book that weren’t in The Luminaries;</p>
<ul>
<li>“Cockatoo” was a slang word for new immigrants.</li>
<li>Most of the buildings had those calico interior walls.</li>
<li>The only interior passage between the east and west coast was a horrendous gorge that not even horses could traverse! This is what necessitated all the perilous sea voyages into Hokitika.</li>
<li> Gold lust! The other novel really gave a sense of what it was like to stumble upon gold and become possessed with dreams of wealth. Reading it sort of made me want to go some place – any place – where I could find even one flake of gold in the ground, somehow, and snatch it up.</li>
</ul>
<p>The other book also had several characters you really got to know. In The Luminaries, the characters were pretty much like chess pieces the author enjoyed moving around. </p>
<p>I loved The Luminaries. I went in expecting a puzzle of sorts and that’s what I got - and a good one. For some reason, I had no trouble with the characters. Moody and Staines are the two that I had to stop and think about. Both remain somewhat elusive at the beginning - Moody as observer and Staines as enigma. I ended up liking both men immensely.</p>
<p>I felt the length of the book weighing on me about mid-way through. However, I flew through the last sections and did not want the book to end. I will reread at some distant point in the future. </p>
<p>I liked The Illuminaries, but thought it was too clever by half - so I ended up admiring it more than enjoying it. I was totally taken aback by the magical realism element, but is there any other explanation for how Emory Staines ends up with a bullet in him, and Anna Wetherell is able to sign his name to the paper while being illiterate? And did anyone actually murder Carter? I’ve never before been compelled by a book to go google the town and walk through the landscape. You can see how that river entrance was such a problem.</p>
<p>1.That first meeting and telling of tales was part of what made the book so hard to get into for me. You start with Balfour’s version of the events which goes on and on and on, but then I got pretty confused as to whether we really did get everyone’s point of view. Did we really hear from all twelve of the in first person? Or third person limited viewpoint? Maybe with a rereading I could figure it out. But it doesn’t help when we end up switching to the author (who is this author anyway?) with obtrusive announcements that they are going to take over the story telling. i.e. page 262 “We shall therefore intervene, and render Sook Yongsheng’s story in a way that is accurate to the events he wished to disclose, rather than to the style of his narration.”</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I used to read tons of historical fiction (back in high school), but don’t read a lot now. I think the last historical novel I read was Wolf Hall which annoyed me no end for various reasons - but particularly the way it handled dialogue. This certainly wasn’t Katharine, or Georgette Heyer or all those Anya Seton books!</p></li>
<li><p>I’ll let someone else tackle the astrology. I did find the chapter “Sun in Pisces” part III, interesting where it goes on about the Age of Aquarius vs the Age of Pisces. (Hair started playing in the background!) But I’m afraid I just started rolling my eyes at it. Too much of a Virgo logician perhaps? ;)</p></li>
<li><p>I have to admit I rather liked how the court episode turned out though it seems to me Lydia got off easy.</p></li>
<li><p>Which ending - the one at the end of the court scene time wise? Or the ending where we go back to the beginning? I felt a bit manipulated, so no it did not make me feel differently about freewill or determinism. I felt the author made those choices. (Thomas Hardy often makes me feel this way, though I like him very much.)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>This is one of the few book club books my husband has also read. He felt it was one big soap opera. I felt like it was playing with the soap opera conventions, but that’s not quite the same thing as being a soap opera.</p>
<p>I actually have tried prospecting for a pleasant hour back in the 1980s. My boyfriend and I were hiking in the Los Angeles forest and we met up with a guy who was panning for gold in the stream. He showed us what to do and we ended up with a few flakes that we put on slide. You’d have to have panned for a long time to get anything worth turning in for money! 
</p>
<p>Tauwhare killed Carver. And Emery Staines was hiding behind the drapes in Anna’s hotel room, apparently unbeknownst to her, when he was hit by the bullet.</p>
<p>That’s what I told my husband, but he’s not convinced. I obviously need to go back and look more closely. Those are the assumptions I made too.</p>
<p>^^^ No! Emery Staines was in the crate on the boat when Anna’s bullet hit him. </p>
<p>mathmom - or her husband - pegs the magical realism angle. Staines can read and write; Anna can’t - but then she can to an unexplained degree. Anna eats and loses weight; Staines survives with no explanation as to how and where he got sustenance. Anna smokes the last of her opium but remains unaffected and has no withdrawal symptoms - Staines is an opium addict with a suddenness that no one can figure out. (When Anna says she smoked the opium, she’s not lying. She has no explanation for why she’s clear-headed or can read and write or loses weight while eating or how she knows Staines is alive and thinking of her.)</p>
<p>Biggest clues: </p>
<p>Page 717-19 Mrs. Well finds that Emery and Anna are astral soul-mates and tries to explain it to Anna.
</p>
<p>Last section - “The Luminaries” (Anna and Emery):
Note that Anna smokes and Staines is drugged; Staines hits his head and Anna is concussed. </p>
<p>Moody finds Emery in the crate shortly after Anna’s bullet pierced him, not her. Once you accept the magical realism, all the pieces fall firmly into place. </p>
<p>Anna and Emery are the luminaries. Another clue can be found in the note to the readers at the beginning of the book:
</p>
<p>Did Emery lie in court? (Everybody else does, more or less.) As for Emery, I’m not sure. His memory is drug-addled. His testimony does not make sense with the reality of things; we know he wasn’t with Ah Quee. And he can’t have been behind the curtain when Anna shot the gun and on the boat at the same time. </p>
<p>Once you accept the magical realism, all the pieces fall firmly into place.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It’s called “breaking the fourth wall.” </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You’re right, Ignatius. I haven’t yet finished re-reading the last 100 pages, and I’ll admit that I didn’t read the beginning of the final “Luminaries” section closely enough the first time around. I had figured out most of the other things you mentioned, but I still didn’t understand how (or if) Emery ended up in the shipping crate.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Perfect description.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I also liked both men immensely, but I felt cheated. I wanted more than a beguiling glimpse into their characters. We don’t meet Emery until…what…about page 600? And Moody doesn’t really come into his own until the court scenes. </p>
<p>However, I realize that Catton’s novel would not be the marvel it is if she gave us a more traditional story focusing on one or two main protagonists. This fantastic puzzle is only possible because of the huge cast of characters and the need to skim only the surface of each one in order to maintain the mystery until the end.</p>
<p>I agree completely with the way ignatius laid out the magical realism – Emery takes a bullet for Anna from a distance; she feeds him from her own body from a distance, etc. When you think about it, this intermingling of their bodies and souls is an incredible thing, a beautiful bond of love. But as a reader, I didn’t feel it was earned. I liked Emery and Anna, but I didn’t root for them with any depth of feeling because so little is revealed about their relationship.</p>
<p>Love ‘em or hate ‘em, at least with couples like Jane and Rochester or Catherine and Heathcliff (magical realism in those cases, too), the reader has been on an emotional roller coaster ride with the characters, and they feel fully formed.</p>
<p>As for the end, could someone please explain Francis Carver’s death? How exactly did Te Rau Tauwhare arrange it?</p>
<p>
Precisely! And they had all the personality, depth and individuality of chess pieces. That was one, but just one, of the reasons I heartily disliked–no, detested–The Luminaries. It was one big, dull parlor trick–even setting aside the astrology nonsense–and by far the most pretentious and overpraised book I’ve ever read. Yes, there’s a moderately interesting plot buried deep inside all the literary machinations, but it’s much to hard to excavate, so why bother? The Victorian writing style is another element that serves only to show how clever the author is rather than enhancing the story. I remember when my kids had writing assignments where they had to assume the style of an author or era. It was a fun and enlightening exercise. As the basis for a novel, it’s just a tiresome affectation.</p>
<p>That’s all I’ll say, though I could bore you all for quite a while relating all the aspects of The Luminaries that I found wanting. Carry on!</p>
<p>MommaJ, no not boring at all! I think for this novel to work, she had to make us care about the characters more than she did.</p>
<p>And as for breaking the fourth wall - I’ve hated it as a device in novels since I threw The French Lieutenant’s Womanacross the room when Fowles presented me with ending number two. I don’t mind it in theater where the action feels pretty artificial all along. I can sometimes accept it in movies, but it’s really rare that I want to know the author is playing with me in a book.</p>