The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton

Prepared by Sue B

Eleanor Catton's Booker prize-winning novel, The Luminaries.

About 8 members gathered to discuss this very large novel set in the New Zealand goldfields in the nineteenth century. Not all of us had read all 832 pages, and as usual our reactions varied. Some liked it and others were disappointed. Some found it a very good read just as a mystery, others felt that after all the complexity the book was “hollow”.

The first 200 pages took some concentration as many characters were introduced. We found the recapitulation of the plot at about page 320 very useful as all the jumping about in time and different points of view took some getting used to. We discussed the complexity of the plot for some time, wondering if the author had an enormous flow chart on her wall as she wrote, some of us feeling that there were considerable holes in the plot and others querying whether we were supposed to care about that.

The characters were well drawn and interesting, including “shady characters like the Wild West”. We found the interactions between the characters were often very perceptive, one of us commenting that the young author seemed “emotionally precocious”.  We couldn’t agree whether the two main characters underwent any real character development though, and wondered whether they were even meant to?

The book had a nineteenth century feel to it in some ways. One of us was reminded of Thomas Hardy and another of Dickens. Each character was introduced in a quite theatrical nineteenth century way, and each chapter had an introductory summary. We enjoyed the joke that in the later chapters the summaries became the actual story and if we had made the mistake of skipping them we then had to backtrack. There was some racism and other nods towards nineteenth century attitudes. However the book does not moralise as do many period novels. We enjoyed the sense of place created, for example by the description of the rain in Hokitika. We noticed the humour, for example when Nillson inadvertently ended up as the generous donor.

We wondered what the book was actually about. Truth and lies? That there are many sides to a story? “Some things are never done” so once set in train things don’t get resolved? The deceptiveness of appearances – for example in the séance? The structure of the book was surprising. There was a lot of build up to the court scene but it was not the climax.  Each chapter was half the length of the preceding one.

We noticed that the whole book was structured around the zodiac, and each character in it represented a different force. Some of us felt that this distorted the story and made it and the characters less believable and meaningful. For some it was largely just decoration. Others found that astrology worked as an interesting way to interpret the world.

Everyone agreed that this book gave us a lot to talk about.

Lloyd Jones, Hand me down world

Courtesy Text Publishing

All 8 (or so) Minervans who attended our meeting at the end of March to discuss Lloyd Jones' latest novel, Hand me down world, liked it. Some loved it, some liked it, but no-one disliked it. That says something about the quality of this book, methinks.

This is a multiple point of view novel chronicling the story of a young African woman who leaves Africa, by boat as an illegal immigrant, to find her son (who had been illegally taken from her when he was a baby) in Berlin. The first chapters of the book are presented as witness accounts by those who saw or helped her on her way. The rest of the book is told in larger chunks with, near the end, Ines (as we come to know her, though this is not her "real" name) telling us her (version of) her story. All these stories, except the Inspector's near the beginning, are told first person.

What Ines does to achieve her end is not - shall we say - always ethical. For her, the ends justifies the means in her desperation to make contact with her child. There's a death, and there's quite a bit of thieving and lying. For some Minervans this made her an unappealing character with whom they could not relate. For all of us, though, it certainly challenged us to think about what we might do - how far we might go - in similar circumstances. Another criticism of the novel was that it got a little bogged down in the central Berlin section ... did we need the full Defoe section some thought?

We discussed at some length the meaning of the title. Some ideas (including from reviews/interviews) included that:

• the world, our world, is a rather arbitrary one
• the son was, in a sense, "handed down"
• people inhabit different worlds
• Ines wore, symbolically, a hand-me-down coat, rather reflecting her status in the world as a "used" person because, for all her faults, she sure was "used"
• versions - of things, people - are a theme of the novel (just as, really, the world has different "versions" depending on who we are and where we live)

Jones, it appears from the two novels we've read of him, keenly interested in the marginalised and dispossessed. His views are perhaps most encompassed by Bernard (or Millennium Three), the French character who most supports Ines, no questions asked. He talks of his politicisation in Berlin:

...we abhorred the state-inspired delineations and definitions of difference. Borders. Citizenship. Rich. Poor. Entitlement.

Another witness, the Film Researcher, talks of "other":

Until then she was, black, African, other. But now I saw a young woman who looked about the same age as my sister Alison. I could have been looking at Ali, apart from the obvious differences. Now I knew what I must do.

How to meet and react to "Other" is a powerful challenge for us all ... and Jones, in this novel, tackles it head on ... it's a powerful tale.

And there I'll leave it. Our discussion was a month ago so I can't remember the finer detail. Minervans, if I've misrepresented us, here's your chance. Comment away!