ODT books editor Helen Speirs sat down with Man Booker Prize-winning New Zealand author Eleanor Catton between her appearances at last weekend's Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival, hoping to shed some light on the West Coast goldrush murder mystery doorstopper that is The Luminaries.
Eleanor Catton made history last October when she won the 2013 Man Booker Prize for The Luminaries. At age 28, she became the youngest writer to win, with the longest winning book (832 pages), and was only the second New Zealand winner (Keri Hulme won it with The Bone People in 1985).
Seven months later she is still feted worldwide, sought-after to attend events and festivals, including a sellout evening at the Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival last weekend, asked to sign books, field media engagements, and is regularly stopped in the street.
She admits to being a bit over it all. She has agreed to an interview, but has drawn the line at having a separate picture taken to accompany the article.
''I've done so many photo shoots. They're the worst part,'' she says, while acknowledging ''it sounds ungrateful to even say it''.
She says her newfound celebrity status is at odds with the private life of a novelist used to hiding behind their books.
''I find it very uncomfortable, very strange.''
But she is relaxed, witty, open and engaging, and remarkably generous - in more ways than one - in her responses to questions.
Catton talks much in the same way as she writes - at considerable length and breadth. (I should perhaps have known to expect that from the author of the 270,000-word, elaborately structured The Luminaries.) She does not give concise or convenient answers. Her explanations are thoughtful, measured, as if she is carefully weighing everything she tells you (that will be the Libran in her, of course), and range around a wide area before alighting on the nub of the question.
It seems rude to try to hurry her, even though her publicist is marking time; besides, everything she says is gold.
There is an ethereal quality about Catton. Her smile is infectious and her wide-eyed gaze makes you feel she is giving you her full attention, but behind it I am keenly aware there is a formidable mind at work.
Dressed casually in trousers and a simple grey sweatshirt (she and others from the Victoria University Press delegation are off to Tunnel Beach immediately after our interview as it is a beautiful late-autumn Dunedin day), I also notice she wears no jewellery, save for a traditional analogue wristwatch with a large round face. It is symbolic, I think, as the circular nature of time and spheres in various forms are writ large in The Luminaries.
But I digress. Time is ticking after all.
Catton says she has come back to earth somewhat after the immediate aftermath of the Man Booker win. She tells me she had been booked to attend a writers festival in Calgary, Canada (she was born in Canada and moved to New Zealand with her family at the age of 6), before the book had even been shortlisted and flew there from Heathrow Airport two days after the award ceremony.
''I sat down in my [plane] seat and just stared at the blank screen in front of me and didn't move for eight hours. I think I needed that decompression.''
She returned to New Zealand in the new year, grateful to have had most of the big ''fuss'' already out of the way and to ''slip back incognito''.
Her careful, considered responses may in part be a result of the fact some of the things she has said have gone viral and been repeated ad nauseam (for example her ''men over 45'' potshot in reaction to C.K. Stead's notoriously unflattering criticism of The Luminaries). She realises her ''visibility has changed'' and with it has come a ''change of responsibility''.
''I have to watch my Ps and Qs on Twitter.''
But she is reluctant to dwell on the negatives, saying feedback about her and the novel has been generally positive, and especially so in New Zealand.
''People are really proud ... When people recognise me in the street they treat me in a very familiar way.
''It's nice when that happens. It's really meaningful.''
The Man Booker prize also left Catton with the winner's cheque of 50,000 ($NZ95,000), which, it turns out, remains untouched.
''I haven't done anything with it yet,'' she says, laughing.
There are plans. Some is likely to go on travel related to future research, and ''it would be nice to buy a house''. She claims to be ''not very good with money'', and has visited only two Auckland open homes, recalling how at one there was already an offer on the table and she asked the agent how much it was for.
There is more self-deprecating laughter at her own naivety.
Much has been made of her relative youth in the wake of the Man Booker win. Does she ''feel'' her age, particularly when writing?It probably means she finds ''more sympathy for the younger party'' in a dynamic or perspective or character, she says, but thinks ''people have made too much of it,'' citing various young Romantic writers.
''Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein at 19 and it is a perfect novel which gave birth to an entire genre.
''Older writers have the advantage of more reading experience, she says, but ''there are very powerful emotions associated with young writers''.
''I feel young, but it's a good thing.''
But age can change one's perspective.
Catton has previously admitted to being embarrassed by parts of her debut novel The Rehearsal (about a high school sex scandal, published when she was 23), and I wonder how she feels about The Luminaries now.
''I felt more revealed [as a second-time novelist] so it was much more of a test. But I do feel it was the best I could do and I didn't feel that way about The Rehearsal.
''I'm still onside with it in lots of ways.''
However, she confides she had the first experience recently, while at a writers festival in Galway and giving a public reading of an excerpt that was chosen by the organisers, of thinking: ''I'm now older than the person who wrote this and I wouldn't write it like this any more.''
Astrology has a prominent role to play in the book, which raises the question of whether its success was written in the stars. Was it a lucky strike, or the result of sheer hard work?
The novelist's answer is ''pure Eleanor Catton''.
She runs through the notion of luck in various forms, before arriving at the specific answer.
''I feel very lucky when I look back on the journey the book's taken, but I haven't forgotten how terrifying it was ... with no idea if I would finish it, if it would work.
''I would describe it to people and they would laugh. It was a cause of great doubt and fear and, as it got longer and longer, it was also a source of amusement for people.
''No-one can see the dead ends and false starts ... the behind-the-scenes-stuff. It can be very daunting.''
The book contains an enormous quantity of historical detail, taking two years to research and three years to write. She worked full time on it during various residencies, and initially while studying at the University of Iowa.
It suggests Catton is her own hard taskmaster.
''I don't think I was hard on myself; it was great fun,'' she says, adding the hard part was being selective.
''There were a great many scenes on the cutting-room floor.''
I am interested in learning which came first: the story or the complex mathematical and astrological structures, where her interest in them originated, and how difficult it was melding the three.
''The idea of the astrological/archetypal structure and building that into a murder mystery came together ... I had them both in mind from the beginning. The idea of the chapters diminishing came later. It was also the aspect of the structure I was most willing to jettison.''
Catton ''came to astrology'' through reading Carl Jung's collected works, with his ideas of archetype versus stereotype, the anima and animus, and his interest in astrological concepts of the zodiac as a 12-part story. She explains the ideas of the self and fate, the sun and the moon, the outer and inner self.
''It's not a 50/50 relationship; it's one of harmony, not of halves,'' and that ''fed into the idea of the golden ratio'', the mathematical element she employs, whereby each of the 12 parts of the novel is half the length of the preceding part.
''There was something about that concept that grabbed my interest, partly because the golden ratio is written into all sorts of forms where we find beauty.''
The West Coast setting was an easier location for a gold-mining story than Otago, Catton says, as she was more familiar with it.
''It presented itself more naturally as the novel's world.
''I was also taken by the extreme visual contrasts on the Coast - impassable mountains on one side, impassable ocean on the other.
''It's nice also that Hokitika has the meaning of 'return', suggesting a circular movement.''
There are references to the gold fields at Dunstan and Kawarau, and some of the action takes place in Dunedin. Dunedin is familiar from childhood visits but the writer didn't visit the city specifically for research, saying the 35 Cumberland St address of Lydia Wells' ''House of Many Wishes'' and the George St stationery shop were made-up addresses and not based on any building there at the time, although she had previously taken a boat trip on the harbour which she used as the basis for the first encounter of central characters Anna and Emery.
The next chapter for The Luminaries looks like being a TV series. The BBC is developing a script that Catton hopes might be finished by the end of the year. She is executive producer, to ensure ''the spirit of the book is preserved''.
It would be ''crucial'' to film the steamer scenes here at least, she says.
''I would love Emilia Clarke [Game of Thrones] as Anna, and my partner Steve [poet Steve Toussaint] wants Andrew Garfield [The Amazing Spider-Man, The Social Network] as Emery''.
As much as readers will eagerly await the series, many will also be wondering what they can expect from her next.
''I'm not writing fiction right now, but there are some ideas I'm flirting with,'' she says.
''I doubt that I'll begin anything new until next year at the very earliest: life is just too busy right now, and my imagination is being pulled in too many different directions.''
But the literary luminary has set herself another epic task in the meantime.
''I do have a reading project: I've set myself the challenge of reading all of Shakespeare, and trying to commit all the best speeches to memory.
''I've been shouting 'Now, gods, stand up for bastards!' [King Lear] while doing the dishes for the last few weeks.
''I dread to know what my neighbours must think.''
The stars align . . . eventually
Some readers have found the astrological underpinnings of The Luminaries easier to follow than others.
I confess I had to work at them. I have read the novel twice, and made my own lists in an attempt to understand the characters who are aligned to the signs of the zodiac and those who are aligned to the planets.
I show Eleanor Catton the dated teach-yourself-astrology book I have been using, and she is quick to inform me she didn't use Uranus, Neptune or Pluto, so some of my interpretations are wrong.
She used what were the classical seven planets and clarifies for me their corresponding characters: Emery and Anna are the sun and the moon respectively, the eponymous luminaries of the story; Moody is Mercury, Lydia is Venus, Carver is Mars, Lauderback is Jupiter and Shephard is Saturn.
I feel all I have managed to reveal is my own ignorance. She kindly shares with me one of her own embarrassing moments, confessing it was only late in the piece it dawned on her she was using the ''golden'' ratio in a story about gold mining.
''It was a bit corny really.''
She also confesses in her talk at the Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival that evening that the transtasman references she makes in the book are anachronisms as the Tasman Sea was not named that at the time.
I make the case for her to write a ''User's Guide'' or ''Astrological Companion'' to The Luminaries to help readers better understand the concepts and thereby get a richer understanding of the characters.
''Down the line that could be fun,'' she agrees, but adds ''I think my publishers probably think the book is quite long enough without an essay at the back''.
She says the structure had to be robust enough to stand up to scrutiny by people who did understand astrology, but she is adamant readers should simply enjoy the story.
''My primary intention is to create an experience whereby the reader feels there is a larger machine or design at work than the one they can readily see - to me it is very much like the universe, like a clock with hands or cogs moving, the angles always changing.
''The most important thing is that the story is fun.''
The Catton file
• Born in Canada in 1985.
• Raised in Christchurch.
• Educated at Burnside High School, University of Canterbury, Victoria University, University of Iowa.
• Debut novel The Rehearsal published 2008. Wins several literary prizes or awards, and is shortlisted or longlisted for several others.
• Second novel The Luminaries published 2013. Awarded Canadian Governor-General's Literary Award for Fiction. Wins 2013 Man Booker Prize.
• Made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2014 New Year's Honours. Lives in Auckland.
• Teaches creative writing at the Manukau Institute of Technology.
The Luminaries is published in New Zealand by Victoria University Press.
