New Zealand – MostlyFiction Book Reviews We Love to Read! Sat, 28 Oct 2017 19:51:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.18 THE LUMINARIES by Eleanor Catton /2013/the-luminaries-by-eleanor-catton/ Tue, 17 Dec 2013 12:13:06 +0000 /?p=22428 Book Quote:

“But there is no truth except truth in relation, and heavenly relation is composed of wheels in motion, tilting axes, turning dials; it is a clockwork orchestration that alters every minute, never repeating never still…We now look outward…we see the world as we wish to perfect it, and we imagine dwelling there.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (NOV 17, 2013)

Twelve men meet at the Crown Hotel in Hokitika, New Zealand, in January, 1866. A thirteenth, Walter Moody, an educated man from Edinburgh who has come here to find his fortune in gold, walks in. As it unfolds, the interlocking stories and shifting narrative perspectives of the twelve–now thirteen–men bring forth a mystery that all are trying to solve, including Walter Moody, who has just gotten off the Godspeed ship with secrets of his own that intertwine with the other men’s concerns.

This is not an important book. There is no magnificent theme, no moral thicket, no people to emancipate, no countries to defend, no subtext to unravel, and no sizable payoff. Its weightiness is physical, coming in at 832 pages. And yet, it is one of the most marvelous and poised books that I have read. Although I didn’t care for the meandering rambling books of Wilkie Collins, I am reminded here of his style, but Catton is so much more controlled, and possesses the modern day perspective in which to peer back.

I felt a warmth and a shiver at each passing chapter, set during the last days of the New Zealand gold rush. Catton hooked me in in this Victorian tale of a piratical captain; a Maori gemstone hunter; Chinese diggers (or “hatters”); the search for “colour” (gold); a cache of hidden gold; séances; opium; fraud; ruthless betrayal; infidelity; a politician; a prostitute; a Jewish newspaperman; a gaoler; shipping news; shady finance; a ghostly presence; a missing man; a dead man; and a spirited romance. And there’s more between Dunedin and Hokitika to titillate the adventurous reader.

Primarily, The Luminaries is an action-adventure, sprawling detective story, superbly plotted, where the Crown Hotel men try to solve it, while sharing secrets and shame of their own. There’s even a keen courtroom segment later in the story. And, there are crucial characters that are not gathered in the Crown that night who link everyone together. The prostitute and opium addict, Anna Wetherell, is nigh the center of this story, as she is coveted or loved or desired by all the townspeople.

The layout of the book is stellar: the spheres of the skies and its astrological charts. You don’t need to understand the principles and mathematics of astrology (I don’t), but it is evident that knowledge of this pseudoscience would add texture to the reading experience, as it provides the structure and frame of the book. The characters’ traits can be found in their individual sun signs (such as the duality of a Germini). The drawings of charts add to the mood, and the chapters get successively shorter after the long Crown chapter. The cover of the book illustrates the phases of the moon, from full moon to sliver, alluding to the waning narrative lengths as the story progresses.

“But onward also rolls the outer sphere–the boundless present, which contains the bounded past.”

Take note of the cast list at the beginning, which is quite helpful for the initial 200 or 300 pages. With so many vivid characters coming at you at once, it is difficult at first to absorb. However, as the pages sail (and they will, if this appeals to you), you won’t even need the names and professions. The story and its striking, almost theatrical players become gradually and permanently installed, thoroughly and unforgettably. From the scar on Captain Francis Carver’s cheek, to the widow’s garment on Anna Wetherell’s gaunt frame, the lively images and descriptions animate this boisterous, vibrant story.

Catton is a master storyteller; she combines this exacting 19th century style and narrator–and the “we” that embraces the reader inside the tale–with the faintest sly wink of contemporary perspective. Instead of the authorial voice sounding campy, stilted, and antiquated, there is a fresh whiff of nuanced canniness, a knowing Catton who uncorks the delectable Victorian past by looking at it from the postmodern future.

You will either be intoxicated by this big brawl of a book, or weighed down in its heft. If you are looking for something more than it is, then look no further than the art of reading. There’s no mystery to the men; Catton lays out their morals, scruples, weaknesses, and strengths at the outset. The women had a little poetic mystery to them, but in all, these were familiar players–she drew up stock 19th century characters, but livened them up, so that they leaped madly from the pages. There isn’t much to interrogate except your own anticipation. If you’ve read Colour, by Rose Tremain, don’t expect any similarities except the time, place, setting, and the sweat and grime of the diggers. Otherwise, the two books are alike as fish and feathers.

The stars shine bright as torches, or are veiled behind a mist, like the townspeople and story that behave under the various constellations. Catton’s impeccably plotted yarn invites us to dwell in this time and place. At times, I felt I mined the grand nuggets of the story, and at other times, it blew away like dust.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 230 readers
PUBLISHER: Little, Brown and Company; First Edition edition (October 15, 2013)
REVIEWER: Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Eleanor Catton
EXTRAS:
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Another big book set in New Zealand:

Bibliography:

]]> CHALCOT CRESCENT by Fay Weldon /2010/chalcot-crescent-by-fay-weldon/ Fri, 15 Oct 2010 14:56:30 +0000 /?p=12936 Book Quote:

“I will be sorry to leave this life, as soon I must. It is so full of wonder, as well as horror. A surprise around every corner and the pace is hotting up.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (OCT 15, 2010)

Two things about British novelist Fay Weldon: she will always be controversial and she will always be relevant. Known primarily as an author of female-centered books, Weldon –who just turned 79, by the way, worked in advertising at one point in her career, and she also wrote the screenplay for the 1980 version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. In 1998, Weldon, called a feminist novelist for decades, came under fire for her comments on the subject of rape. In 2001 Weldon once again became the subject of controversy with her novel The Bulgari Connection when it was revealed that she’d been paid 18,000 pounds to quote the jeweler at least 12 times. How’s that for product placement? After some initial waffling came Weldon’s great get stuffed response: “Well they never give me the Booker Prize anyway.”

Chalcot Crescent--Weldon’s 29th novel (her 30th if you count Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen) is a bit of a change of pace. Weldon’s characters are predominantly females struggling to survive in a male dominated society, and while these women should, of course band together to form a cohesive, formidable alliance, they more often than not devolve into rivalry and squabbling as they battle over men–the so-called spoils. In Chalcot Crescent, Weldon’s world of 2013 offers a tableau of a slightly different sort. Yes men still rule, but it’s the faceless sinister monolithic government–the true enemy–and the ultimate patriarchal society–in charge of a world that’s gone horribly and believably awry. Is this science fiction? Perhaps–although I think the world of Chalcot Crescent is too close to the truth for that. Instead it’s the sort of Weldon-dabbling we see in the futuristic The Cloning of Joanna May (1989) and the alternative realities of Mantrapped (2004).

Weldon tells the reader that this book is the story of her lost sister “set in an alternative universe that mirrors our own.” With Weldon’s characteristic humour, the novel’s protagonist, Frances now aged 80, is a once-successful, now-penniless writer living in Chalcot Crescent while her loser sister, Fay–a writer of cookbooks has hightailed it to back to New Zealand. Holed up in her Chalcot Crescent home, surrounded by foreclosures, Frances hides from the bailiffs who are about to turf her out of her house and presumably onto the street. Trapped inside her home, she describes a world that’s gone to hell:

“Then came the Labour Government of 1997 and the Consumer Decade–as it is now called–and by 2007 the house next door to me sold for £1.85 million. Then came the Shock of 2008, the Crunch of 2009-11–when house prices plummeted and still no-one was buying–then the brief recovery of 2012, when at least properties began to change hands again, though our friendly European neighbours became less friendly, the US embraced protectionism and the rest of the world had no choice but to follow. And then came the Bite, which is now, and with it a coalition and thoroughly dirigiste government which keeps its motives and actions very much to itself. And though a few major figures in the financial world went to prison, the nomenklatura still ride the middle lanes, have their mortgages paid for them and do very well, thank you. The rest of us are presumably moving to the outskirts: fifty years on and we are back to where we began. I reckon I had the best of it.”

With the economy in a permanent state of emergency, the NUG (National Unity Government) is running the country. Rules, regulations, and rationing control everything–from an intermittent water supply to CCTV. Everyone is supposed to eat a rather suspicious manufactured substance called National Meat Loaf, vegetarianism is ridiculed, and home grown-produce is taxed by Neighbourhood Watch programmes. People who’ve lost their homes in the economic downturn disappear and are relocated to the nether regions of the “outskirts.”

Frances goes back and forth in her descriptions of the past and the present, and as she types her story into the computer (hoping to sell a book if there’s enough paper), she plays with the idea that some of what she’s writing is fiction. She details her major relationships and the lives of her rather disappointing children as she rode the wave of economic affluence to its disappointing conclusion. With numerous marriages, second spouses, lovers and stepchildren, it’s all very complicated. For Weldon fans, reading Chalcot Crescent is very much a pathway through the author’s life and work–the incidents, the loves and the hardships; it’s all here, or at least the parts that Weldon wants us to know about are here, and all treated with her characteristic humour. But apart from the witty and wicked exploration of Frances’s past, there’s also Frances’s present; Amos, Frances’s favourite grandson, a member of the radical breakaway group Redpeace is part of a guerilla composed of members of Frances’s family. While Redpeace plots direct action against the government, Frances is relegated to dotty-old-lady status by her monkey-wrenching grandchildren.

Chalcot Crescent may read like a science-fiction fantasy, and depending just how you feel about the state of the world, reading the novel may be an uncomfortable experience at times. Weldon’s world is not so far removed from reality. Most of us have seen the gutting of the American and British economies, and the subsequent beginnings of a new peasant class. The novel also dabbles with notions of agent provocateurs and Redpeace–a supposedly radical group that’s allowed to exist in plain sight. Again there’s that idea of Weldon’s relevance. Even as I confess to a certain disappointment in the novel’s ending, I suspect that Weldon is much cannier than her critics acknowledge. I was rather hoping for a Shrapnel Academy style ending, but instead as Guy Debord would say, even the most radical gesture will eventually be Recuperated.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 2 readers
PUBLISHER: Europa Editions; Reprint edition (September 28, 2010)
REVIEWER: Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia Page on Fay Weldon

British Council biography of Fay Weldon
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Contemporary women authors:

Margaret Atwood

Joyce Carol Oates

Bibliography:

Nonfiction:

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