The World's Literature in Europe discussion

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton is this summer's read. It's her second novel, the debut novel being The Rehearsal. Its main character is Walter Moody and its setting is around Hokitika, South Island, New Zealand, in the year 1866. As a genre, it's both a historical fiction and a mystery. Of significance to this story and to New Zealand history is the West Coast Gold Rush. In style, this novel mimics that of a nineteenth-century novel.

Some questions for consideration or research:

* What do you make of the title?
*What was the West Coast Gold Rush?
*What is distinctive about a nineteenth-century novel?

Reconsidered this post.

Luminaries are celestial bodies which are under the gravitational influence of a community of celestial objects. The degree of influence between bodies depends on the the relative mass and separation among the bodies in a complex configuration. Luminaries either produce or reflect light. Both light and gravitational attraction are reduced as a square of the distance. The zodiac is twelve constellations along the path of the sun. So, the ancients identified and named groups of luminaries which were important to cultural rights and rituals and which will presumably be important to Catton's luminaries.

Regarding the 19th-c. stylized approach: A few reviewers dislike the way Catton introduces characters with a preçis that includes their appearance, psychological profile, and moral precepts. But is that not part of the conceit? Although I didn't cross-check astrological references, I appreciated these "stage directions" as notes to file away for future reference. I for one feel that this types of world-building pays off in the larger narrative, although I agree with those who regret that certain characters leave the stage.

Don wrote: "Reconsidered this post."

Sorry to have not yet replied to your comment before you found some parts of it not to your liking. I do recall your addressing how Luminaries plays with the nineteenth-century novel. Since the book's setting is circa 1866, that period is applicable to the Victorian novel rather to what literature came before.

Prominent characteristics of the late-nineteenth-century novel are--

"responding to rapid social change...the possibility of revolution...shifting understandings of class, gender, sexuality, nation and culture...the country and the city, the house and its objects, and how the body inhabits space" http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/en...

Other descriptions of novels of that period feature genre, technique, and society--

"the Bildungsroman; the historical novel; the regional novel; the provincial novel; the gothic novel; the industrial novel; the sensation novel; the detective novel; the science fiction novel; the New Woman novel..."

"the omniscient narrator...the "multi plot" novel...the creation of novels out of elements of the journalistic sketch"

"male and female gender roles...definitions of nationhood and ethnicity...conceptions of history and politics" http://english.columbia.edu/19th-cent...

Those novels

"engaged with the events, circumstances, beliefs and attitudes of their time...representing and exploring social and cultural change." http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/modules...

I especially liked the way the nineteenth-century novel's features were set out at http://www.nvcc.edu/home/ataormina/no... Those are some of the touchstones to which The Luminaries might be compared as reading through Catton's novel advances. Chime in to claim which of these traits or other ones are distinctive about The Luminaries.

Suzann wrote: "Luminaries are celestial bodies which are under the gravitational influence of a community of celestial objects. The degree of influence between bodies depends on the the relative mass and separat..."

Suzann, the "gravitational influence" is harmonious with the novel's twelve main characters in their social surroundings.

Drabauer wrote: "...A few reviewers dislike the way Catton introduces characters with a preçis that includes their appearance, psychological profile, and moral precepts. But is that not part of the conceit?..."

Yes, I like the maps and character chart placed in the front matter as an introduction to this complicated novel, and the changing circle diagrams of twelve segments named for each character throughout the story. They are introductions to the story that follows.

Asma Fedosia wrote: "Drabauer wrote: "...A few reviewers dislike the way Catton introduces characters with a preçis that includes their appearance, psychological profile, and moral precepts. But is that not part of the..."

Thank you, but I was not thinking of the charts, rather of the text itself - how the characters are introduced (I didn't pay much attention to the charts). My question was rather, is this not a convention of the 19th c. realist novel?

Drabauer wrote: "... how the characters are introduced...is this not a convention of the 19th c. realist novel? "

I don't know, Drabauer. One might compare the beginnings of some 19th-c novels with the beginning of The Luminaries. Relevant titles for comparison would be book titles Catton mentions in the story and those her reviewers mention.

Asma Fedosia wrote: "the "gravitational influence" is harmonious with the novel's twelve main characters in their social surroundings...."

Yes, I agree. The metaphor is very apt for the community of 12, burnishing the rustic ruffians with the universal.

I am enjoying this book tremendously. The celestial references of the chapter titles are passing by me (likely due to my lack of true understanding of moon phases, the horoscope). But, I am enjoying the words right off the pages with this book.

Suzann wrote: "Luminaries are celestial bodies which are under the gravitational influence of a community of celestial objects. The degree of influence between bodies depends on the the relative mass and separat..."

Suzann, I have to agree with some others in that I'm not attending to the changing astrological placements for characters' personalities and so forth. It's a good story anyway, I mean the mystery. I like the clergyman Devlin who seems like a sleuth with personality. He is not all action as the pausing to depict his confused motivations to the reader takes time.

Drabauer wrote: "... I for one feel that this types of world-building pays off in the larger narrative,..."

Hi, Drabauer, how do you like The Luminaries so far? Is it fulfilling your hopes for a good story?

Drabauer wrote: "... how the characters are introduced ... is this not a convention of the 19th c. realist novel? ..."

Again, a good question. From this novel's comparison (so far) with the links in message 5, I see the story as about the society in a particular place/period with continued influence from the British empire, for starters.

Suzann wrote: "...the community of 12, burnishing the rustic ruffians with the universal ..."

I agree, too. The author captures not only the nitty-gritty of historical mystery but enchants the story with celestial myth, as ancient civilizations might have done.

Wanda wrote: "I am enjoying this book tremendously..."

A great mystery by itself...Puts me in mind of Sherlock Holmes's British adventures twelvefold.

Dear Asma,

I have since finished The Luminaries and I loved it. I do think it repays the commitment, for the reasons I enumerated above.

Drabauer wrote: "I have since finished The Luminaries and I loved it. I do think it repays the commitment..."

The mystery with the murder, disappearance, etc in the New Zealand mining town is a page turner. I want to be surprised by this story's ending.

There's not much in the way of literary analysis here (I wouldn't know where to begin with that), just that the story is so entertaining.

I don't know that I found the ending surprising, but it enriched any ideas I already had – if that makes sense. The closing chapters fill out more detail on the characters and context, but grow shorter; one has the illusion of action, when really one gains a kind of panoramic view of the whole.

I have finished The Luminaries. I have been so caught up in this fantastic novel, I have barely given thought to much else. At times, I stayed up way past my bedtime to read and upon awakening in the morning, was cross knowing that I had to go to work rather than being able to pick up where I left off. I read and re-read chapters (happily) feeling I had missed something. This book proved well worth the commitment. I will gladly re-read this book. Thank you!

Wanda wrote: ...This book proved well worth the commitment. I will gladly re-read this book. Thank you! "

So glad that you loved The Luminaries, Wanda. That's amazing, about your going back to cover the parts for pleasure in the details. I must admit that the beginning of the novel in particular made a rereader out of me. The author tells a terrific story with good characters and with an interesting historical setting. I've picked up a narration by Mark Meadows. It's like the story was made for him, he dramatizes the characters and their speech so well.

Suzann wrote: "Luminaries are celestial bodies which are under the gravitational influence of a community of celestial objects..."

From perusing the initial listing of characters and their planetary associations, I did not predict anything about the story. Going back over that list and knowing now something about the plot, I can see the relationship between Anna and Emery.

[edit:] My version of the character list says "Outermost" and "Innermost" for those two characters; another version of it actually transposes "The Sun/The Moon" and "The Moon/The Sun" to identify Anna and Emery.

Goodreads has many discussion topics about The Luminaries. Some of the most fruitful for additional insight are the ones in non-bold typeface (Death of Crosbie; What happened to the gold under Gascoigne's bed; Moody's father; Gold in the dresses and amount found in cottage; What did Moody see on the Godspeed?; Character list; Titania wreck & the unclaimed crate; (and continued on page 2) Why is this book described as a ghost story?; Opinion of Mr Carver; etc. I also found some of the ones in bold typeface helpful.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/list_...

I guess my problem with this book is that it just simply isn't as good as the 19th century classics it is meant to parody. Its all well and good to inject 21st century notions of grievance into the past but books like The Moonstone or Lady In White addressed similar issues with more nuance and were much more reader-friendly and entertaining. From this philistine's perspective modernism is leading literature into a new dark age compared to the heights of glory reached in the 19th century.

This history of Maori and Chinese miners in New Zealand might be interesting: http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/gold-and-...

Don wrote: "...books like The Moonstone or Lady In White addressed similar issues with more nuance and were much more reader-friendly and entertaining..."

In writing about The Luminaries The Guardian book club mentions Collins's Victorian sensation genre.

Don wrote: "This history of Maori and Chinese miners in New Zealand might be interesting: http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/gold-and-..."

Great find, Don, for the online The Encyclopedia of New Zealand's articles and photographs capturing the eras, places, and people of NZ gold mining. Interesting to me are the difference between hard-rock and alluvial sources of gold, the graph of New Zealand's gold mining activity and miners by place and year, and the link to New Zealand's literature. In the novel, it seems that much of the narration so far occurs indoors or inside, so the photographs of settlement and mining furthers the realism of the setting.

Glad to find that The Luminaries is in this list.
http://www.historicalnovels.info/Aust...
Other historical novels about the NZ gold rushes are there, too--Alterio, Shadbolt, Tremaine

More pointers to the Victorian sensation novel, particularly to Wilkie Collins:

Suzanne Gruss points to "...a fallen woman; a mysterious woman with a past; a number of rivalling narrators...; and a seeming excess supply of legal elements."

Andrew Lycett points to "themes of villainy and mistaken identity", "disputed wills and marriages...and the need to explore and put things right..to the injustices meted out to women and others who had suffered at the hands of an unthinking legal system and society."

Laura Miller points to "middle-class characters...suddenly confronted with alarming, inexplicable and uncanny events whose true causes and (usually scandalous) nature are gradually revealed in the course of the story."

Back to the nineteenth-century British sensation novels with which The Luminaries is compared. There have been characterizations of it throughout this thread. Here is Mike Grost's syllabus of "British Sensation Novels" (LeFanu; Collins; Wood; Gilbert; Dowling; Campbell). Hopefully, by reading some of those examples, a resemblance between them and Catton's story ought to emerge as well as between them and the descriptions of Victorian sensation novels.

The one for today is:
LeFanu's "Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess" (1838)

Thank you, Asma, for the interesting links.

Wanda, the link "British Sensation Novels" is reset to the correct place on the page.

Thank you, Asma. I will give it a re-visit.

Following the link about "British Sensation Novels in message 30, I read LeFanu's short story "Passage in the Secret History..." for an improved understanding of The Luminaries. Catton's novel, of course, is set around 1866; that's said to be the heyday of Wilkie Collins' sensation fiction. LeFanu's thriller-mystery story of 1838 is an early example of the genre. The sentence structure between Catton and LeFanu seemed similar, a mystery is at the heart of both, and the females, especially in Catton, are not "shrinking violets".

The next sensation fiction reading is Collins's "MR WRAY'S CASH BOX OR THE MASK AND THE MYSTERY-- A CHRISTMAS SKETCH"

Asma Fedosia wrote: "Following the link about "British Sensation Novels in message 30, I read LeFanu's short story "Passage in the Secret History..." for an improved understanding of The Luminaries. Catton's novel, of ..."

Thanks for these links. Very interesting and I hope to spend more time reading the authors that you list. FWIW I recently finished Herman Melville's Pierre: or, the Ambiguities in which he is said to satirize/parody the English romantic style (http://www.jstor.org/stable/2924866?s... ). I can't help but think these sensation novels were on his mind as well. Perhaps that the sensation novels make a recurring target for parody suggests that they do have an enduring appeal?

Don wrote: "...I recently finished Herman Melville's Pierre: or, the Ambiguities in which he is said to satirize/parody the English romantic style...I can't help but think these sensation novels were on his mind as well..."

Probably, someone has written a journal article about Melville's* use of sensation fiction amidst that genre's typical setting in British literature. Besides the recent The Luminaries, there's Sarah Waters's Fingersmith with links to it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensati...

Some reference books about the genre: A Companion to Sensation Fiction, and The Cambridge Companion to Sensation Fiction

* Only saw this listing because of access -- "The Sensational Fiction of Hawthorne and Melville" by Anne French Dalke in Studies in American Fiction Volume 16, Number 2, Autumn 1988, pp. 195-207

The New Zealander and Goodreads author Raymond Huber explains The Luminaries in his review.

reviewer's blog: http://www.raymondhuber.co.nz/blog/

Went looking for podcasts about this book. Wasn't being picky and was pleased with the first or second one. In "Eleanor Catton on The Luminaries", Claire Armitstead, John Mullan, and Catton talk about astrology, language, and other marvels in her novel.

Among other notions, this The Walrus podcast brings out a difference between the Victorian fiction and that of the next century--the cosmic influence on individuals, such as birth and place of birth, but not to deny entirely free will and individualism. Like a pearl on the string of New Zealand 1860's gold rushes, the town of Hokitika in The Luminaries is the setting where the making of one's fortune predominates and where's its real value is assessed.

Asma Fedosia wrote: "The New Zealander and Goodreads author Raymond Huber explains The Luminaries in his review.

reviewer's blog: http://www.raymondhuber.co.nz/blog/"

Thank you, Asma. The more information I read after having read The Luminaries (and going into that initial reading completely ignorant), the more I want to re-read The Luminaries. I liked this blog a lot. Very informative.

pp 626-8, 774, 832 the albatross

When Staines and Wetherell first meet, their fortuitous meeting takes place on the steamer Fortunate Wind, as the ship from Sydney, New Zealand, reaches Dunedin's harbor. The calls of the albatrosses had awoken her, and those airborne birds bring together the couple at the ship's railing. Staines clearly is excited by the sight of the birds' activity, enthusiastically pointing them out and telling Wetherell about their bringing "good luck", being "mythical", and bearing "symbolism...angelic". For Staines, the daybreak is special, not being an occasion to recite from memory The Rime of the Ancient Mariner*. Later in the novel, Staines and Wetherell reencounter each other on the day when Wetherell arrives in Hokitika, their former conversation about albatrosses serving to reacquaint them with each other. The novel's end is their dialogue: "My beginning was the albatrosses." / "That is a good beginning; I am glad it is yours. Tonight shall be mine."

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albatro...

Wanda wrote: "...The more information I read after having read The Luminaries...the more I want to re-read The Luminaries..."

The author would encourage you to reread her novel about three times. I agree with you, Wanda, about the background reading. Those podcasts, interviews, and reviews are educational, revealing the novel's secrets and aiding the understanding. I'm glad that there's been some leisure for exploring the story.

On the lower right of The Luminaries 's book page is a link to Trivia Questions and a Quiz about the novel. One question is tricky. Good Luck.