<p>Excellent point, Mary! 
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<p>I enjoyed the New York Times review of The Luminaries, especially this paragraph:</p>
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<p><a href=“Eleanor Catton’s Booker Prize-Winning ‘Luminaries’ - The New York Times”>Eleanor Catton’s Booker Prize-Winning ‘Luminaries’ - The New York Times;
<p>Well I never would have expected this:</p>
<p><a href=“'Luminaries' to Light Up Small Screen - The New York Times”>'Luminaries' to Light Up Small Screen - The New York Times;
<p>In case the firewall is a problem, here’s the gist: “Eleanor Catton’s Booker Prize-winning novel, “The Luminaries,” will be turned into a television mini-series. Ms. Catton told the Greymouth Star that she insisted the series be filmed in New Zealand.”</p>
<p>I think it will be a very different breed of cat by the time it becomes a teleplay.</p>
<p>A little off-topic, but I recently saw the movie An Angel at My Table. about the New Zealand author Janet Frame. Really good. She was from Dunedin! I had never heard of Dunedin before The Luminaries and was thrilled when the name came up. I hadn’t even known how to pronounce it properly; DunEEdin.</p>
<p>Another good NZ movie is the 1994 film Once Were Warriors, about a troubled Maori family.</p>
<p>^^^ As long as we’re off topic: everyone in the family enjoyed the movie Whale Rider.</p>
<p>I read in an earlier interview with Eleanor Catton that she hoped that if the book were made into a mini-series, it would be 12 parts, with each part from the perspective of one of the 12 men. Looks like that’s not going to happen, though, for budgetary reasons.</p>
<p>I agree with MommaJ – I’ll bet there will be some significant changes to the work when all is said and done:</p>
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<a href=“Eleanor Catton's 'The Luminaries' Picked Up as a TV Miniseries”>http://www.bustle.com/articles/14444-eleanor-cattons-the-luminaries-picked-up-as-a-tv-miniseries</a></p>
<p>“Can’t get a bit of luck, can you?” Mannering said (p. 554).</p>
<p>or maybe</p>
<p>“Luck is never the whole picture,” said Staines (p. 792).</p>
<p>Luck and/or lack of luck plays a goodly part in the story, as it probably should in a gold rush town.</p>
<p>For me, Anna meeting Lydia Wells when she first arrived qualifies as the epitome of bad luck. I want to rank that as #1 on my bad luck list, except poor Ah Quee may be challenging Anna for the #1 spot. After all, he’s stuck with Mannering and the duffer Aurora.</p>
<p>And then there’s luck and Lydia - never one to miss a “gold nugget” of opportunity:
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<p>The gold nugget that Crosbie retained from his bonanza, and from which Emery benefited so greatly, was surely a lucky nugget.</p>
<p>Thanks for setting me straight on the baby! But I’m still a bit unclear about the crate, because when Staines testified, he said very clearly that he was struck by the bullet when hiding in Anna’s room, after he snuck in, looking for her opium supply.</p>
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<p>He said he was there for 3 hours, and neither Anna, Gascoigne, or Pritchard heard him. So they must not have looked very hard for the bullet! It couldn’t have been a very big room.</p>
<p>But then the questioning goes off to other things, and Staines doesn’t say how he got from the room to the crate.
So maybe the chronology picks up with “in drugged confusion Staines sets out into the night” toward the Quay, with Staines not just drugged, but also shot.</p>
<p>Except Anna and Staines spent the night together on the 14th of January, according to his testimony–followed by Anna’s drugged “misstep on the Christchurch-road,” Crosbie’s death, etc. but the shooting in her room took place LATER, on Jan. 27th, after Staines had been in Chinatown for a while. So the heading at the beginning of Chapter 12 still doesn’t make sense to me, unless it’s meant to be thematic, not chronological. </p>
<p>It’s not clear how Staines got out of the room undetected, either, since after Gascoigne left, Anna stayed, Lydia came, Anna left with Lydia and then moved out, and Clinch went into the room to look for the bullet. But if he snuck in, I guess he could sneak out! :-)</p>
<p>To add to the confusion, on the day Emery said he was in Anna’s hotel room, Pritchard could tell that Anna’s pipe had recently been smoked, but he could tell that it could not have been she who smoked it. (Emery testifed that he had smoked it himself.) In addition, Pritchard perceived the smell of the sea at that time and couldn’t understand why. It was the smell of Emery!</p>
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<p>He lied. He perjured himself on the stand in order to give an account that would be believable, as no judge in the world was going to buy his unearthly and magical connection with Anna.</p>
<p>The smell of the sea in the room and the disappearing opium, I also chalked up to the magical way that Emery and Anna kept sharing physical things (food, bullets, opium, laudanum) while apart.</p>
<p>At least that’s what I thought. I’m totally open to other interpretations!</p>
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<p>After finally building up the courage to visit Crosbie following years of silent shame, Lauderback reaches him just moments after his death.</p>
<p>I thought that was extraordinarily bad luck.</p>
<p>^^^ Crossposted with Mary.</p>
<p>Anna smokes the pipe but Staines feels the effects of her opium use. (Anna tells the truth when she says she ate the opium and has no explanation for her apparent clear head.) Emery’s on the boat in the crate when Anna shoots the gun. Moody discovers him about that time and flees in fear. Magical realism! Anna acts and Emery bears the brunt of her actions. </p>
<p>Does Emery lie at the trial? I don’t think so. He’s drugged and his memories tainted. He thinks he spent time in the opium den with Ah Sook and that’s not correct. He does have a vague memory of making it to shore by clinging to something but has no idea how that memory fits.</p>
<p>Bottom line: Anna and Emery can’t explain anything logically. She, who can’t read or write, suddenly can and with perfection. She shoots and the bullet disappears. Three people look for it and it can’t be found. No way a shot and bleeding Staines hides behind the curtains. I assume - like Anna says about him - he’s with her in a way that defies reality.</p>
<p>But back to the trial - does he lie or does he assume he’s telling the truth because it only makes sense? I think the drugged (through Anna’s opium use) Staines has little memory of his time in the crate. Anna sustains life for both of them (eating, drinking, and with opium.) Emery supplies the court with an explanation … illogical but less illogical than what actually happened. He may even believe it or at least parts of it. The nine men who testify and Moody know something illogical happened because Moody either sees a ghost on that ship or he sees a man … but if the man Emery falls from the crate then he can’t be behind the curtain. Devlin knows Anna signs Emery’s name and can’t account for her ability to do so. All (Anna and Emery included) have to accept something out of the ordinary happened. (The whimsical, open Emery would have little trouble accepting magical realism, I think.) </p>
<p>I think everyone at the trial lies … either directly or by omission … one of the things I enjoyed. Many veered to the “nothing but the truth” version. </p>
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<p>Well, I can see how Anna might have used opium that one time in the hotel room and not have exhibited its effects because Emery experienced them, and not she. That fits with the other magical realism stuff. But apart from that, I don’t think she used opium during the time Emery was absent. She was with Lydia, didn’t visit Sook, didn’t get opium from Pritchard…</p>
<p>I agree that Emery could not really have been in the hotel room. How thick could those drapes have been, anyway, and how would he have gotten into the room and left it?</p>
<p>^^^ Anna finishes the opium during the two weeks that follow the ill-fated night of January 14. Emery is in the crate during that time. I have no idea how many times it takes her to finish what she has … only that two weeks later on Jan. 26, she had smoked recently to no effect. Emery survives after that only because Anna eats and she loses weight/looks ill. I don’t think Emery suffers drug-delirium at that point but rather fever, shock, loss of blood delirium. No idea how he makes it from point A (the shore) to point B (Well’s cottage). Does he lie about what he knows as fact … I don’t know.</p>
<p>I want to add that I didn’t catch on to the Anna/Emery connection for the longest time. I had the pieces - Anna could read and write without knowing how to read and write, and so on - but didn’t put them together. It sounds like Mary got there much quicker than I did. I kept trying to figure out how Emery could be on the boat and in the room at the same time. My biggest clue to the switch came in that last section that’s been quoted. Once I caught what happened, it all fell into place. I reread sections and it all fit. Once you accept the impossible, it works grandly. </p>
<p>The only thing I really figured out, even on a second reading, was that Anna’s emaciated state was caused by the phenomenon that what she ate sustained Emery!</p>
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<p>You’re right. Emery may not have deliberately lied because he was not clear on what the truth was.</p>
<p>But I don’t think Emery had any recollection whatsoever of being behind the drapes (because [in my opinion] he never was). I think that Walter Moody, who clearly coached everyone before trial, fed Emery the story because he was trying to create a plausible explanation for the entire scenario.</p>
<p>I think Emery would be delighted with the idea that so much of what occurred was via the supernatural. And maybe inside his sweet ingenuous self, he’s pretty sure that’s what happened. But Emery is smart enough to let Moody hold the reins and lead him where he needs to go during trial.</p>
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<p>Yep. I had an epiphany on p. 541, when Anna forged the signature. I knew instantly that Anna and Emery were, in a sense, inhabiting one another’s bodies, and then had a full 300 pages left to watch it all play out. It helps that I’m a diehard romantic. Those with a more practical turn-of-mind might not like the magical realism. In a way, it’s a dirty trick. We the readers are faced with a complex puzzle and the solution is…magic! Ta da! Sort of a deus ex machina.</p>
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<p>LOL, I knew it!! The more I think about it, the more I realize I was incorrect in my earlier assessment that I “tolerated” the mystical happenings between Anna and Emery. I now feel that it is* because* the book turned into a magical romance that I became more engaged with it in the end!</p>
<p>How do you guys make the quoted person’s name into a blue “link”?</p>