The Luminaries
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Description
On the ship, Anna meets Emery Staines ( Himesh Patel), our hero. There is, as he will later tell one of the Characters-with-a-capital-C (Francis Carver, ex-convict, employed by the local madam who is inveigling Anna into prostitution to do away with him – do try to keep up), “a kind of magic” between them “that is absolute”. We will see what the fates have to say about that.
The Luminaries (miniseries) - Wikipedia The Luminaries (miniseries) - Wikipedia
She also wanted to emulate the novels published around the time her story is set, by imitating the language and the form of each chapter having a short header setting the stage for the action. This was cute, but around then end, when all the strings are really coming together and one sees the big picture clearly at last, it started to feel silly, especially as the closing chapters are very short and you almost get more information from the header than you do from the actual text. the way the chapter summaries increased in length as the chapters themselves decreased so that the final one is much greater than the chapter it summarizes (few of the items in the summary were visible in the chapter itself), reminding me of the parts of the moon that become invisible to us as it wanes.Astrology, a pre-existing complex (fictional) system has been used as a starting point for the characters' interactions. (A three-stairs-in-one-stride step up in intricacy from the use of playing cards in The Rehearsal.) Not only that but Catton has partially refashioned astrology to her own purpose by making each of the main characters a sign or a planet, and various buildings the houses on the chart - such that, for example, Mercury in Aries means a meeting of those two characters. (I think it would also be perfectly possible to enjoy the book as a story whilst ignoring or knowing little of these aspects.) Corpse duty might be a job no one else likes—cleaning up the nightmare bodies left behind in the forest each morning, as well as any human bodies—but Winnie has always enjoyed it. Her brother calls her morbid; she calls him boring.
The Luminaries review – a compulsively complex novel becomes
The writing (for me) was spot on. Eleanor Catton’s use of metaphors and her sentence construction drew me in like the sweet, intoxicating haze of opium smoke. Having quoted Shakespeare's "Macbeth," I do not intimate that The Luminaries should be considered a tale told by an idiot. Oh, no. Catton has artfully crafted a complex behemoth of a tale of the Gold Rush of 1866 in New Zealand. This is a work that carries great promise. The scope of Catton's cast of characters intimates she has done her research on the New Zealand gold fields. The ultimate question is whether Catton's tale, artfully crafted or not, leaves the reader with the satisfaction of having completed a work that leaves a lasting impression, or at least some semblance of significance. The adaptation features much more of a focus on the love story between Anna Wetherell (Eve Hewson) and Emery Staines (Himesh Patel) who meet on a voyage to New Zealand and find themselves sharing a supernatural and astrological connection. Their relationship isn't as integral to the novel, but here it is right at the heart of the story, captivating us early on. Winnie doesn’t watch them go. She has been doing corpse duty for three years now and even if today is her birthday, even if her stomach is as knotted as a harpy’s braid, the familiarity of routine soothes her.
Customer reviews
More pointedly than murder mysteries, there’s another example of a pattern placed over reality in the form of the gold mines themselves. These affect the world physically, silting up the Hokitika River; and Catton never allows us to forget that this is land which once belonged to the Maori. ‘You with your greenstone, us with our gold. It might just as well be the other way about,’ says one character to the Maori Te Rau Tauwhare. ‘No,’ replies Tauwhare, ‘it is not the same’ (p. 814) – but that is as much as we hear. These issues may not be explored in detail in The Luminaries (the book's structure restricts Tauwhare's voice, mirroring the wider society) but Tauwhare still speaks eloquently, for all that he does not say.
- Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
- EAN: 764486781913
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