August's Book: The Luminaries

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

Western (2013 - 832 pp.)

Eleanor Catton is a Canadian writer, two years older than me, who won the 2013 Man Booker Prize for The Luminaries while I was still in law school. Bravo. More to the point, she was raised in Christchurch, New Zealand, and was evidently inspired enough by local history to set The Luminaries in 1866 during the New Zealand gold rush. Historically accurate gold miners, outlaws, and sketchy rural pharmacists abound, as a patchwork jury of 13 local men attempt to figure out who killed Crosbie Wells, why the opium-addicted prostitute Anna Wetherell was drugged, and who made off with all the money.

Our protagonist, young lawyer Walter Moody, comes upon the scene to find twenty-four-year-old mining mogul Emery Staines vanished and presumed dead. Moody is convinced he hears Staines's ghost inside a nailed-shut wooden crate on board a ship, while charlatan madam Lydia Wells organizes a seance to communicate with the presumably deceased Staines. The other characters, such as my favourite back-alley chemist Joseph Pritchard and semi-sleazy banker Charlie Frost, have to watch all this unfold. Catton's strength is in creating lovable characters, whose stunned responses to the madhouse scenarios thrown their way echoes how readers would react to those same scenarios. The town's hospital is so useless, people with all manners of maladies are sent directly to Pritchard, sometimes in a wagon. Harald Nilssen, a commission merchant, seems ready to commission just about anything. (Non-spoiler: yes, this gets him in hot water.) In a tiny town far away from the rest of civilization, the most qualified person appears to perform any number of tasks. I shudder to think of myself providing tax law advice, but then, it's not like much was being taxed in New Zealand in 1866 anyhow.

The prevalence of the shipping industry in that era's New Zealand gives Catton the license to have characters appear, exit, or be totally transient. Stowing away on a cargo ship proves a cheap and easy way to see the world. Alternatively, Ah Sook's transportation from Kowloon to New Zealand ends up being the bane of his existence, as he tearfully confesses. Generalized ne'er-do-well Francis Carver, son of a wealthy merchant, becomes a fraudster who serves as the book's main antagonist. I use the term "antagonist" loosely, as none of the characters in The Luminaries appear to be nice people, exciting as their stories are.

The timeline jumps back from 1866 to 1865, so the reader has to be careful to watch for the date accompanying each chapter. At one point, the book travels exactly a year into the past, (656) which was initially confusing but quickly became clear. Catton's interrupted timeline allows the reader to see past events through the lens of their inevitable fallouts, which gives the last quarter or so of the book a very "aha!" feel.

Shockingly, in an 832-page book featuring a prostitute and taking place in multiple hotels, there is no sex scene. I am not entirely sure what to make of this, which means that in an already too-long book,* it is probably for the best that there is no additional material. Judicial clerk Gascoigne is certainly tempted by Anna, Staines is her lover for a brief time, and she frequently passes out high on opium in Ah Sook's den, but that's as far as it went. In reference to Anna's initial recruitment to prostitution, I smiled upon seeing the term "euchred", (694) although the card game was not yet cemented in its modern form.

The courtroom scenes fell flat for me. As someone who finds inevitably inaccurate courtroom drama interminable, I found the entire section on the trial wearing. Catton confuses some criminal and civil terms as well (why would a criminal case have a plaintiff?), although it's entirely possible New Zealand trials in 1866 were sloppy, haphazard affairs. Nonetheless, legal inaccuracy in media is an ongoing nuisance to me. By contrast, Wells's letters (469-479) were gripping. Reading faux-19th-century correspondence written with the knowledge it might never be returned is at once tragic and investigatory, as though I were an archivist pawing through old letters trying to solve the case. The closest comparison is to Adam Ewing's journal in Cloud Atlas, which is my favourite part of that book.

I don't usually read westerns, but when I do, they seem to be written by Canadians. What a fun genre. I think we could all use a few more gunslingers on our reading lists.

Ease of Reading: 9

Educational Content: 3**

*The Luminaries clocks in at a hideous 263,000 words. By comparison, notable doorstopper Perdido Street Station by China Mieville (220,000 words) is approximately half a novel shorter than The Luminaries. I'd say someone should have hired Catton an additional editor, but she has a Man Booker Prize and I don't, so the point is taken.

**For a book that does not purport to contain any educational content whatsoever, The Luminaries 

provides a good overview of the New Zealand of the time period from 30,000 feet. While the book is about as realistic as Jack London's White Fang and Call of the Wild, it captures the spirit of the times well.