Neo-Victorian Voices: Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter, Lizzie Pook (2022)

Welcome back to the Neo-Victorian Voices review series, covering novels set in the nineteenth century, but written in the twenty-first. Today I’m blogging for the first time about a book set in 1800s Australia! The closest I’ve gotten previously was 1800s New Zealand, when reviewing Eleanor Catton’s 2013 The Luminaries back in 2018. 

It’s 1896 in Western Australia when Eliza’s father, the owner of a prominent pearling business, goes missing at sea. She and her family arrived from England ten years previously and have suffered more than their fair share of tragedy since. Now, the tomboyish Eliza is on a mission to find and save her father, as she couldn’t the family members she lost before. 

Pook deftly introduces us to the world of a remote (fictional) Australian town, peopled by diverse immigrants, corrupt authorities, and a mistreated aboriginal population. It’s a vibrant setting of inhospitable landscapes, teeming with fascinating, and dangerous, animal life, such as salties, sharks, and kleptomaniac cockatoos. 

If you read historical fiction to be transported to a different time and place and to learn about past events you might not have been aware of, there’s a lot to enjoy about Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter. I relished the insight into the pearl trade and the additional levels of agency possible for a nineteenth-century heroine in an Australian vs. a British, or even an American, setting. Eliza is also an appealing main character, likable without being flawless.

I wish the supporting characters had been a little more developed, especially Axel, Eliza’s will they/won’t they potential love interest, Min, her friend, and the antagonist Parker, who is irredeemably evil. No spoilers here but the revelation of the reason behind the father’s disappearance was also a little underwhelming.

All in, this is an original contribution to the genre and a novel I’d recommend to readers looking to broaden their horizons and follow a nineteenth-century heroine far beyond the drawing room.

What novels should I consider reviewing next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want monthly updates about my blogging/writing? Sign up for my email newsletter here.

Neo-Victorian Voices: The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton (2013)

The Luminaries is the kind of novel that makes people uncomfortable (and not just due to its sheer size!). It pushes readers, rather than spoon-feeding them. It breaks many of the rules adhered to by aspiring writers (there are by some counts 19 protagonists—try selling that one to your creative writing professors). And, above all else, it plays with our love of logic—the reasoning and deduction that appeals to fans of mystery and detective fiction—while threatening this with a structure based on the astrological and a conclusion leaning towards the mystical.

Many of the negative reviews of the novel which you can find on Goodreads and Amazon (which aren’t nearly as numerous as those glowing with praise for this Man Booker winner) sound closer to break up letters. Reviewers tell the book they’re not sure if “it’s you or me”. They’re worried that they’ve failed a test, that they’re not the readers they thought they were, that they’ve missed the point.

Eleanor Catton (1985-)

But, as with most novels, The Luminaries, while a monumental achievement, has strengths and weaknesses. Whether you’ll enjoy the novel as much as I did depends on the value you ascribe to each area:

Setting

Many of us read historical fiction to be transported to a different place and time and Catton has a wonderful setting in 1860s Hokitika in New Zealand. There are many tropes of the nineteenth-century doorstopper here, in a novel more complex than Dickens’s Bleak House and with multiple narrators as in Collins’s The Woman in White, but the unique setting opens up new possibilities for a cast of gold-diggers, prospectors, politicians, prostitutes, all trying to make it in a new world, greater diversity, with Maori and Chinese characters as well as British transplants, and a spectacular natural backdrop to a very human drama.

Plot

Catton is a master of plotting. I’d give anything to see her outline document! If you love to puzzle out novels, obsess over the course of events in the podcast Serial, even draw out your own timelines to keep events straight, this novel might be for you. If not, it won’t be. This novel doesn’t go easy on the casual reader. Skim one sentence and you might miss something. Revelations aren’t repeated or greeted with fanfare.

Pacing and Structure

The structure of The Luminaries is one of its most distinctive features, with parts decreasing in length as the novel progresses to mirror the waning of the moon. The characters act and interact in accordance with the star signs and other astrological bodies they represent, with the star charts preceding each section bringing another dimension to the reading experience. This is all very interesting but the victim of this grand design is the novel’s pacing. The first section is overly long and it takes too much time for any pieces to fall together. The language and the promise of the magic to come was what kept me reading but I can understand why some might have lost their patience. Once the pace picks up so did my reading. It probably took me half the time to read the final 600 pages, than the first 300.

Character

This was one of the most puzzling aspects of the novel for me. The astrological framework provides a distinct basis for each of Catton’s characters and yet they often didn’t feel differentiated enough. Bizarrely, I got more of a sense of personality when we weren’t in that character’s point of view, making me wonder if the omniscient narrative intrusions were keeping us at a distance from those whose heads we were meant to be in. In Victorian style, characters’ traits are described but I rarely saw them acted out in a memorable way. If your favourite thing about fiction is rooting for a hero or heroine you won’t find that here, but it wasn’t the lack of sympathetic protagonist that bothered me—rather the characters felt more like pieces on a chessboard than fully realised human beings.

Language

The Luminaries is beautifully written. Long as the novel was I found myself rereading stellar sentences and pausing to marvel at Catton’s turns of phrase. The voice is simultaneously an homage to nineteenth-century fiction and fresh, bringing something new to our bookshelves. We often hear the maxim that literary fiction is character-driven, but The Luminaries proves the power of plot-driven literary writing.

What would you like to see the Secret Victorianist read next? Let me know—here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

The Secret Victorianist in 2018

It’s been a quiet few months on the Secret Victorianist blog, but a busy few months for the Secret Victorianist. Not only do I have an exciting new project in the works (more on that to come) but, as usual, I’ve been living my best nineteenth-century life, all while navigating a twenty-first century existence in New York.

Below is a snapshot of what I’ve been up to:

  

I watched…

The Eifman Ballet

Anna Karenina in ballet form:

This April the Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg returned to New York with this moving dance adaptation of Tolstoy’s classic novel. The cast is pared back and the story simplified to put Anna’s love life at its centre, and the choreography mixes the classical with the more avant-garde. Anna and Vronsky writhe on separate beds, struggling with their feelings for each other, a toy train circles our protagonist who appears trapped in a giant snow globe, the power and momentum of the lethal train is conveyed by the rhythmic motions of the chorus. The production manages to capture the emotional heart of the novel in a way that transcends cultures, decades and language.

To Walk Invisible (2016):

This BBC TV dramatization covering the years 1845-1848 in the lives of the Bronte siblings, directed by Sally Wainwright, is a treat for academics and fans of the literary family. Much of the script builds on the words of the Brontes and their associates, taken from letters and other written records. Not only is it meticulously researched, but this costume drama comes with grit and a heavy dose of reality. Characters wear the same dress (shock!) more than once, the three female co-leads appear not to be wearing makeup, Branwell’s alcoholism rings true. Shot on location in Haworth, it’s a delight for enthusiasts and a great introduction to the Bronte myth for the uninitiated. If teachers aren’t showing it in schools, they should be.

Film poster for Lady Macbeth (2016)

Lady Macbeth (2016):

This movie adaptation of Nikolai Leskov’s 1865 novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District is beautifully shot and deliciously dark. The story now unfolds in rural England, where Katherine Lester (played by Florence Pugh) rages against the confines of her loveless marriage and unfulfilling life with ultimately murderous consequences.

I visited…

View towards the Bronte Parsonage Museum

Haworth—home of the Brontes:

After years of reading about the Bronte household and seeing it on film, I finally visited Yorkshire and spent two nights in Haworth, just round the corner from the parsonage itself. I was struck by how small the house felt when you consider how the family lived there as adults, the sheer number of nineteenth-century graves in the graveyard surrounding the house (testament to the poor sanitation and appalling conditions faced by many of the Brontes’ contemporaries) and by how unspoiled the surrounding landscape remains to this day. Enjoying unseasonably fine weather, I hiked across the moors and soaked in what felt like a spiritual homecoming.

I’m reading…

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (2013):

This Man Booker winning novel is set in New Zealand in 1866 at the height of the country’s booming gold rush. It’s a mammoth achievement, dealing with an intricate mystery. Full review to follow.

So that’s it, folks. I’m back to regularly scheduled programming, so let me know what you would like to see the Secret Victorianist—below, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.