The Luminaries By Eleanor Catton

Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries is a book I have been wanting to read for a very long time. Winner of The Booker Prize 2013, and been a long time back on the Instagram timeline and my thoughts. Ahaa.

At the end of 2019 I finally ordered from the Better World Book and almost failed to get it - because it took so long to arrive than predicted, even though in the end I received the book and the joy was absurd.

The Luminaries is over 800 pages long, and the size and thickness of this book made me feel intimidated at first. Especially after reading a few pages, it turns out that the choice of words and writing style is quite difficult to understand and also not enjoyable. However, I continued reading and it was only after more than 10 pages that I finally started to follow and understand the story.

It didn’t stop there, it turned out that on the next few pages I also felt like ‘giving up’ but failed because it seemed like a strong desire and curiosity overcame feelings of boredom and so on.

Behind the rather difficult writing style and diction, I can’t just ignore the story and plot. The Luminaries tells of a traveler named Walter Moody who just arrived in New Zealand, to be precise in Hokitika. It was only then that Moody realized that the men in town were messing around with mysteries; the death of a drunken hermit in his hut, the richest man who suddenly disappeared without a trace, and a prostitute who nearly committed suicide.

In terms of story, this book is very interesting and extremely intriguing. However, there are enough characters to make character development less. In addition, these many characters with the background stories brought by each are quite challenging to remember. I can memorize the characters and stories they carry so that I can understand the whole story.