He saw the moonlit nursery every time he spoke his cousin's name; he blushed at nothing; he sometimes pinched himself, or uttered an oath, at the memory. For although a man is judged by his actions, by what he has said and done, a man judges himself by what he is willing to do, by what he might have said, or might have done -- a judgment that is necessarily hampered, not only by the scope and limits of his imagination, but by the ever-changing measure of his doubt and self-esteem.
The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton
I finished my project, which was to read this book by Saturday. I found the plot rather hard to decipher -- everyone was scamming everyone else, it seemed, and although by the end, I knew who was bad and who was good (not possible in real life, in most cases, but in this book, two of the characters were really terrible people and the rest were just weak or flawed), I would be hard pressed to describe exactly who tricked whom and how and where the gold came from and who deserved the profit from it.
But I really enjoyed the read. It was like reading Wuthering Heights or something -- it starts with quite a detailed description of one person, who turns out to be a minor character in the actual story. We see things through his eyes at the beginning, but then it gives the story from a variety of viewpoints. It was an epic, sweeping story and I felt like it was a combination of "Unforgiven" and "Bering Sea Gold" and Wilkie Collins and Emily Bronte. I have to take it back to the library tomorrow so I'm rereading the beginning, now that I kind of know where it's all going.
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