FINISHED! Eleanor Catton’s prize-winning novel The Luminaries is a tour de force.

The plot is gripping, the characters compelling. But I gave up lugging the 832-page printed edition around after about 300 pages and succumbed to a tablet, handier for the family holiday.

Reaching the end left me in a turmoil of emotions.

Pleased that I had finished it. Glad to have discovered the dénouement in the final pages. Smugly satisfied that now if anyone now asked me whether I’d read it, I could say why yes, I have.

But I felt sad too.

The characters leapt off the page and I felt I knew them.

I would miss them especially during those small sleepless hours. And once the mystery had been fully revealed, I no longer had that sense of anticipation and expectation that greeted me whenever I opened the cover or even the app.

“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive,” claimed Robert Louis Stevenson.

The saying goes on “and the true success is to labour”.

Endings have the potential to be strangely dissatisfying; they may not live up to their promise; we may not be able to achieve what we have set out to do.

Travelling, on the other hand, gives us meaning – as we move towards our goal (Kindle has an encouraging percentage in the bottom right hand corner to spur you on) and in the excitement, satisfaction and opportunities for reflection journeys can give us.

The gradual and partial disclosure of the characters and of the novel’s events (which some critics have claimed is one of Catton’s greatest achievements) is a mirror to our own lives.

The relationships we develop on our journey with others will also be gradual and partial.

They may not always be comfortable.

Travelling, whether we eagerly anticipate our arrival or fear it with trepidation, always has the potential to be enriching.

So as I turn the book’s final page – I am celebrating and in mourning. The satisfaction of turning that final page is like a death – I will never have that particular sense of eager anticipation again.

I need to plan my recovery. Start another book, embark on another journey?

The prospect gives me an uneasy feeling that the reason why some of my more metaphorical journeys in life seem never-ending may stem from my fear of their dénouement. Evidently, I am not alone. Catton’s 832 pages is a long, long journey…

Martin Field