The Luminaries

Eleanor Catton

Oct 2013 · Sold by Little, Brown

About this ebook

The winner of the Man Booker Prize, this "expertly written, perfectly constructed" bestseller (The Guardian) is now a Starz miniseries.  

It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to stake his claim in New Zealand's booming gold rush. On the stormy night of his arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of 12 local men who have met in secret to discuss a series of unexplained events: a wealthy man has vanished, a prostitute has tried to end her life, and an enormous cache of gold has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely ornate as the night sky.

Richly evoking a mid-nineteenth-century world of shipping, banking, and gold rush boom and bust, The Luminaries is at once a fiendishly clever ghost story, a gripping page-turner, and a thrilling novelistic achievement. It richly confirms that Eleanor Catton is one of the brightest stars in the international literary firmament.

Ratings and reviews

Frankly, I don't know exactly what happened in this book. Stretching a 700+ read over nearly a month results in a lot of forgotten foreshadowing and connections. That said, the book is a page turner. I couldn't wait to get back to it whenever I could. I felt the characters and were invested in their stories. The place and the period were set vividly in my mind. The book is a challenge, but the rewards are great. Highly recommended.

It really was a great read. In retrospect it's slow. But at its slowest, that's when it's at it most ornate and decorative. If you feel the same way, the ending will a make you smile,

Did I miss something?

About the author

Eleanor Catton was awarded the 2013 Man Booker Prize for The Luminaries. Her first novel, The Rehearsal, won the 2009 Betty Trask Award and the Adam Prize in Creative Writing, and was long-listed for the Orange Prize and short-listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and an MA in fiction writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters. Born in Canada, Catton was raised in New Zealand, where she now lives.