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A review by hadeanstars
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
4.0
Quite the undertaking, both in sheer quantity - it's a mighty tome - and in complexity. You can approach this at several levels and most of those levels will be rewarding, but only to a point. I have the advantage of retaining a high degree of astrological insight, and much is made of the astrological lexicon used in the chapter structure of this novel. Does the working knowledge help? Yes and no. Catton clearly knows her astrology, but on the surface of things, the insights are not deep. Take as an example Lowenthal, the newspaperman, who is cited as Sun in Gemini. His long, thin fingers are always coated in printer's ink. It works, we have the Geminian style; but it's not deep.
So therein lies the genius of the work, but it is not at all easy to see. In a way, the novel is too clever for its own good, because this supernaturalism is not accessible in the way it should be. At the more superficial level it's a good, clever, solidly written book. The historical authenticity feels rich and true. The characters are perhaps a little one or two dimensional. Dickensian as my friend would say. But certainly it is rewarding enough. But without the astrology it doesn't really make sense, and even with it, the method isn't clear enough. When you know, you know, and you can be amazed. A truly Mercurial masterpiece, but not enough Neptune for my liking.
Spoiler
Then at another level, and I only learned this later, the novel is a work of genius. Much is made of Anna's missing bullet. We know there is a connection with Emery Staine's injury, a bullet wound to the chest, that manifested from nowhere. If we remember that both Anna and Emery were born at the same instant of time, then we can infer a supernatural connection between them. Anna's bullet somehow passed between them. When later, while Anna spent her second sojourn with Lydia Wells, she was eating well, free of her opium addiction, and yet, losing weight and growing weaker with each passing day, we can assume that she was sustaining the dying Emery instead. When Anna and Emery meet, they discuss the albatross, a bird that has 'weight' is 'mythical' and is like a guardian angel. The fate is forged between them as it is between the albatross that follows the ship halfway around the world. A kind of symbiosis resonant of the symbiosis of cosmic twins as they are.So therein lies the genius of the work, but it is not at all easy to see. In a way, the novel is too clever for its own good, because this supernaturalism is not accessible in the way it should be. At the more superficial level it's a good, clever, solidly written book. The historical authenticity feels rich and true. The characters are perhaps a little one or two dimensional. Dickensian as my friend would say. But certainly it is rewarding enough. But without the astrology it doesn't really make sense, and even with it, the method isn't clear enough. When you know, you know, and you can be amazed. A truly Mercurial masterpiece, but not enough Neptune for my liking.