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Having heard lots of good things about Luminaries, I'd wanted to read this book for a while. However at over eight hundreds pages, I waited until the summer holidays before I began reading.
Given that you're reading a sewing blog, I'm guessing you have some interest in sewing? Fellow sewing enthusiasts, there's something special in this novel's plot for you. Obviously, I don't want to spoil the surprise but this is the only novel I've read where sewing plays a crucial role in the mystery.
It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a whore has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely patterned as the night sky.
Unusually, astrology controls the novel's chronology. The Luminaries is divided into 12 dated parts, spaced at almost monthly intervals. We begin on 27 January 1866, but in Part Four, dated 27 April 1866, we also go back to the events of a year earlier, and the remaining eight parts replay the events of 1865, moving phase by phase through the zodiacal pattern. This is the most elaborate machinery of all, because the decreasing lengths of the succeeding parts mimic the waning moon, each part being half the length of the one before it. Some reviewers have been exasperated: how could such hocus pocus provide the ground plan for a serious work of fiction? Does this all sound a bit confusing? I know nothing about astrology and have even less interest in it but I still loved the story. Truthfully, I was probably a third through before I even realised the role that astrology was playing in the plot.
If you like a challenging mystery to unravel, this book will not disappoint. However if you're anything like my mum, you may end up thinking that it's just too confusing: too many characters. Honestly, there were moments when I couldn't face picking it back up but most of the time I simply couldn't put it down.
When I'm not sewing, I'm reading; actually most of the time I'm at work, running children to sporting events or doing housework. Perhaps for these reasons my reading time is super precious so I'm always quite picky about what I read. I thought I'd share some of my favourite reads of the year, can't guarantee that they'll be anyone else's cup of tea but I whole heartedly reccommend them.
As the new year approaches, and some of us begin to ponder where our lives are going, I thought I'd share this truely great read: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Do you ever wonder where the time has gone? What happen to the twenty year old you? Sentimentality is probably a fault of mine but I'd wager that most readers over the age of thirty will find some truely moving moments in Harold's weird journey. Even better, the narrative is peppered with moments that will at least raise a smile or, more likely, have you laughing out loud.
This touching story opens with the arrival of an unexpected letter and an impulsive act. When Harold Fry, a timid man in his later years, discovers that a former friend is gravely ill, he sets out with the intention of posting her a letter but instead starts walking hundreds of miles from Devon to Berwick-upon-Tweed. Harold hopes that in some way his journey will help his friend to live. While Harold makes his 'unlikely pilgrimage' his wife Maureen waits angrily at home; eventually his distance allows her emotions to resurface. She remembers her husband as he once was and everything he once meant to her.
Joyce's narrative is simple but so touching. Along the way Harold encounters many interesting characters. Some are moved by his act, others confused. At one point he attracts a growing band of fellow pilgrims and becomes the centre of a media storm. The story is laced with loneliness, with life's numerous small disappointments and the 'great grey weight of the real'; the last chapters deliver a couple of unexpectedly savage emotional blows. But this is tempered with real humour and a sense of quiet celebration.
Totally adored this book, it really resonated with me. Harold's an everyman who becomes an extraordinary man.
It would be super to read your views on this book or your recommendations for other books in the comments.
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