By Eleanor Catton
The author challenges Hugo in coloring a character and
scene. She chooses and 18
60’s New
Zealand gold mining town named Hokatika as
her back drop against the New Zealand Alps.
The characters are each described through many chronologic layers. You meet them and learn their
idiosyncrasies. As a murder mystery
unfolds you learn their history. As a
reader you are teased into making a crime scene bulletin board about possibly
two crimes that may have occurred and may or may not be connected. The first crime involves a know death. The second crime involves a presumed death of
a missing person. With the crime not yet brought to formal investigation, the
prosecutors become the suspects as a ‘group of twelve’
colludes and a group of twenty plot and ply against each
other, to solve “who done it” The plot is not original. The mystery is a page turner of sorts. What makes this book a worth while read is
the metaphoric scene and character building.
Then the reader starts to feel duped by the author as the
books turns from a pose of solving a mystery murder to a ‘peeling of the onion’
on society. Eleanor Catton retraces each character in
terms of their own inner character, agenda, motive, and fifteen month history
to reveal the real crime. As each
character is introduced the reader will experience a few paragraphs in
description. The reader would be mindful
to take note of this description as he/she probes for motive of a crime not yet
if ever fully announced. The fault of
society: deceit. Deceit is so prolific
that a prosecuting attorney would be severely tested to make a case for any
crime to have been committed. Sure there
are two men dead. To make aerator’s
portrait…no character the moral case one of the dead men was an alias of the
other. One is dead in the beginning and
the other dies in the end.
Bibliography
Page 4: Moody’s
natural expression was one of readiness and attention. His grey eyes were large and un blinking, and
his supple, boyish mouth was usually poised in an expression of polite
concern. His hair inclined to a tight
curl; it had fallen in ringlets to his shoulders in his youth, but now he wore
it close against his skull, parted on the side and combed flat with a sweet-smelling
pomade that darkened its golden hue to an oily brown.
Moody was no unaware of te advantage his inscrutable grace
afforded him. Like most excessively
beautiful persons, he had studied his own reflection minutely and, in a way, knew himself from the outside best; he
was always in some chamber of his mind perceiving himself from the exterior.
Page 10:
[metaphor] Big as a lady’s pistol
Page 17: the name,
gasped out of the darkness, again and again, Magdalena, Magdalena
It began as a coppery taste in the back of one’s throat, a metallic
ache that amplified as the clouds darkened and advanced. And when it struck, it
was with the flat hand of senseless furry.
Page 32: This of
course, was a verdict that said less about the prisoner than about the
judge. Balfour’s will was too strong to
admit philosophy, unless it was of the sounds empirical sort; his liberality
could make no sense of despair, which was to him as a fathomless shaft,
possessed of depth but not of breadth, stifled in its isolation, navigable only
by touch, and starved of any kind of curiosity.
He had no fascination with the soul, and saw it only as a pretext for
the greater, livelier mysteries of humor and adventure; of the soul’s dark
nights, he had no opinion. He often said
that the only inner void to which he paid any notice was appetite, and although
he laughed when he said it, and he seemed very well pleased, it was true that
his sympathy rarely extended to situations where sympathy was expected to
extend. He was indulgent towards the
open spaces of other men’s futures, but he was impatient with the shuttered
quarters of their pasts.
Page34: Moody had no
small genius for the art of diplomacy.
As a child he had known instinctively that it was always better to tell
a partial truth with a will aspect that to tell a perfect truth in a defensive
way. The appearance of co-operation was
worth a great deal, if only because it forced a reciprocity, fair met with
fair.
Page 65: It is always
a starkly private moment when a governor first apprehends his subject as a man-perhaps
not as an equal, but at least as a being, irreducible, possessed pf frailties,
enthusiasm, a real past, and an uncertain future. Alistar Lauderback felt that
starkness now, and was ashamed. He saw
that Balfour had offered kindness, and he had taken only assistance; that
Balfour had offered friendship, and he had taken only the benefit of use.
Page 75:
[metaphor] board as a tiger in a
carriage car.
Page 79: [metaphor]
Such a tonic for the spirit is the promise for revenge.
Page 82: But Belfour’s
energies tended to span a very short duration, if the project to which he was
assigned was not a project of his own devising.
His imagination gave way to impatience, and his optimism to an
extravagant breed of neglect. He on an
idea only to discard it immediately, if for the reason that it was no longer
novel to him.
Page 80: Devlin, not
wanting to act out of turn, awaited the goaler’s decision, though he wanted
very much to kneel and touch the woman, and check her body for signs of harm:
he was greatly saddened by the notion of suicide, and considered it most
dreadful assault upon the soul that any body could possibly make.
Page 98: Te Rau
Tauhare was not quite thirty years of age.
He was handsomely muscular, and carried himself with assurance and rte
tightly wound energy of youth; though not openly prideful, he never showed that
he was impressed or intimidated by another man.
He possessed a deeply private arrogance, a bedrock of self-certainty
that needed neither proof nor explanations – for although he had a warrior’s
reputation, and an honorable standing within his tribe, his self-conception had
not been shaped by his achievements. He
simply knew that his beauty and his strength were without compare; he simply
knew that he was better than most other men.
This estimation did make Tauwhare anxious however: he felt
that it pointed to spiritual dearth. He
knew that any self-reflexive certainty was the hallmark of shallowness, and
that valuation was no index of true worth – and yet he could not shake his
certainty about himself
Page 104:
[metaphor] Gold was like all
capital in that it had no money; its drift was always onward, away from the
past.
Page 111: Who’s my
partner?Balfour said, with some alarm – thinking that the banker was referring
to Alister Lauderback, whose name he had been careful not to use.
“Why – Mr. Carver, “ Frost said, blinking. “Your prospective partner in business – as
you have just informed me, sir. Mr.
Carver has a joint investment with Mr. Staines, So if Mr. Staines is
dead…”
He trailed off with a shrug.
Page 113: Balfour
enjoyed the fierce indifference of a storm.
He liked lonely places, because he never really felt alone.
Page 118: [metephor] in deference to the harmony of the
turning spheres of time
Page 119: “Crosbie
Wells drank himself to death” said Nilssen.
There was no cause for an inquest, nothing intoward. He was a drunk and a hermit, and when I
received these papers I believe his estate would be small. I had no idea about the bounder.”
Page 125:
[metaphor]Slapping the sand flies that crept up in his jacket until he
was mad enough to dance.
Page 127: [metaphor]
“the man on the inside has to contend with the pawns – with all the pieces of
the system. But the man on the outside
can deal with the devil direct.”
Page 129: [metaphor]
she moved with a wear, murderous languor, like a disaffected swan
Page 151 Anna’s complexion was translucent, even blue,
and tended to a deep p[urple beneath her eyes – as if she had been painted in
watercolor, on a paper that was not stiff enough to hold the moisture, so the
colors ran.
More to come
