THE LUMINARIES by Eleanor Catton
I could not finish The Luminaries. I tried, but, it did not engage me. I wearied of listening in on people telling a tale to the narrator in the first section. Then, I wearied of hearing the same story told again in the second section. Despite the multitude of detailed description of the characters, they were all facade. Remove the descriptive and the expository and there is little else there. The tale was at a bit of a remove, held at arms length; too clever by half. I never made it to the end.
Rebecca in her review on Goodreads states, "(one of my favorite lines was “he built his persona as a shield around his person”)". I was surprised, because that was my favorite line too. What does that say about a book of nearly 850 pages?
As a parody it succeeded in reminding me of all that I dislike about Victorian novels but was not successful in recalling what I liked. If I had had any expectations of the book I would have been disappointed.