"The Luminaries" by Eleanor Catton ****

• Summer read with Beth
• Canadian author
• Originally published in 2013
• Setting:  1866, New Zealand, gold rush
• Vocabulary:
• astrological house:  Twelve sections of the chart wheel, derived from time-and-space related points of the chart (e.g., Ascendant,Descendant, Midheaven and IC). Each House represents a different "field of experience" or set of situations or circumstances in our lives. See table below for examples. The cusp of each house is like the doorway into that house, and each house spans the area from its own cusp to the cusp of the next house (moving counter-clockwise). Houses correspond quite a bit to the signs in their archetypal meaning, but are not the same thing. 
• twinkle:  not in dictionary, author explains it as a cheat achieved when a gambler puts a crystal in the tip of a burning cigar then wavesthe cigar into a position in which it reflects the cards in another player's hand
• judder:  : to shake in a forceful way
• fug:  stale air, especially the humid, warm, ill smelling air of a crowded room, kitchen, etc.
• homeward-bounder:  a mine whose output would allow the owner to return to England a wealthy person
• Characters:  Characters are divided into two groups. ?...stellar/planetary....
• Crosbie Wells,  terra firma,  found dead in his cabin, alleged widow showed up toclaim his estate
• Walter Moody, planetary, "presented himself in the manner of a discreet and quick-minded butler
• Thomas Balfour:  stellar, financier, type whose sense of entitlement comes from many years in which his optimism is supported by success
• Joseph Pritchard:  stellar, chemist, "....whenever the subterranean waters of his mind were disturbed,  he plunged inward, and struggled downward--kicking strongly,  purposefully,  as if he wished to touch the mineral depths of his own dark fantasies;  as if he wished to drown
• Anna Wetherell:  planetary, whore found poisoned by opium,  "her complexion was translucent, even blue,  and tendedto a deep purple beneath her eyes--as if she had been paintedin wTer olor; on paper that was not stiff enough to hold the moisture,  so the colors ran. "....."She was a silent oracle.....knowing not wisdom,  but wickedness--for whatever vicious things one might have done,  said, or witnessed,  she was sure to have witnezsed worse.
• Mannering:  goldfields magnate, stellar- tends to describe others as "reflections of, or detractions from, his own authentic self
• Charlie Frost:  banker, stellar, "He was a private hedonist, perennially wrapped in the cocoon of his own senses, mindful, always, of the things he already possessed, and the things he had yet to gain
• Quee Long:  goldsmith, stellar, ",,,now, not eight years after his death (his father), Quee Long was here, in New Zealand, profiting from the very circumstance that his father -and his country-- had attempted, vainly, to forestall.
• Emery Staines:  Anna's love
• Quotes:"
• p.135.....".....it's this twilight that's the danger,  between the old world and the new."  ......civilised world and un.....?
• p.169...."How silently the world revolved,  when one was brooding, and alone."....Pritchard
• p.193..."No man likes to be called a coward--and least of all, a  man who is feeling downright cowardly."
• p.225..."They sought these women when they looked at Anna, but only partly, for they also sought themselves:  she was a reflected darkness, just as she was a borrowed light. Her wretchedness was, she knew, extremely reassuring."
• p.260..."The drug, for Quee Long, was a symbol, signifying the unforgivable depths of Western barbarism toward his civilization, and the contempt with which the Chinese life was held, in the face of the lifeless Western goals of profit and greed."
• p.342..."The twelve men were united only by their association to the events of the 14th of January, upon which night Anna Wetherell had nearly died, Crosbie Wells had died, Emery Staines had vanished, Francis Carver had sailed away, and Alistair Lauderback had arrived in town."
• p.363...."Unconfirmed suspicion tends, over time, to become willful, fallacious, and prey to the vicissitudes of mood--it acquires all the qualities of common superstition--and the men of the Crown Hotel, whose nexus of allegiance is stitched, after all, in the bright thread of time and motion, have, like all men, no immunity to influence."
• p.363..."For the planets have changed places against the wheeling canvas of the stars.  The Sun has advanced one-twelfth along the tilted wheel of her ecliptic path, and with that motion comes a new world order; a new perspective on the whole."
• p.390..."We spend our entire lives thinking about death.  Without that project to divert us, I expec t we would all be dreadfully bored.  We would have nothing to evade, and nothing to forestall, and nothing to worry about.  Time would have no consequence."
• p.533.....Those solitary visions that, but a month ago, belonged only to the dreamer; will now acquire the form and substance of the real.  We were of our own making, and we shall be our own end."
• p.671...."True feeling is always circular--either circular, or paradoxical--simply because its cause and its expression are two halves of the very same thing!  Love cannot be reduced to a catalogue of reasons why, and a catalogue of reasons cannot be put together into love.  Any man who disagrees with me has never been in love--not truly."....Mr. Staines
• p.714...."...if home can't be where you come from, than home is what you make of where you go.".....Paddy Ryan....Irishman who makes the briefest of appearances
• p.718...."You may have an astral soul-mate, whose path through life perfectly mirrors your own!"....Anna and Emery, explains the way they channeled each other and mirrored each other
• p.765..."...in myself I value loyalty; in others, honesty."...Emery to Crosbie
• Notes:
• the room of  12 men....an inverted pantheon.....meaning the opposite of a group of ruling gods?   P.7
• prospecting as "reverse alchemy"....transformation  out of gold rather than into it
• Significance of February being a month with no full moon?
• the planetary characters were the ones with secrets to hide?  Moody put them in pairs:  the widow and the trafficker, the politician and the gaoler, the prospector and the whore
• Review:   Reading this epic tale of hope, betrayal, loyalty, and above all destiny,  was something of a roller coaster ride.  At times the mystery of death and disappearance was completely engrossing, at times it was a little tedious.  The creative structural theme of astrology was at once a fascinating nuance and at times s bit of a nuisance.  I have a vision of this author with a computer spreadsheet in front of her to keep the facts and fictions within the story from confusing her.  I could have used one at times.  The consistently marvelous part of this book was the character development.  The planetary versus stellar characters, and their intertwined relationships were elegantly constructed.  The fact of the matter is that this novel will stay with me for a long time, yet I do not see it as a classic over time due to the confusing complexity of the plot.