The Luminaries

By: Eleanor Catton

Narrated by: Mark Meadows

Length: 29 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

Longlisted – Baileys Women’s Prize 2014

Man Booker Prize, Fiction, 2013

Canadian Governor General's Literary Award, 2013.

It is 1866 and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of 12 local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a whore has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely patterned as the night sky.

The Luminaries is an extraordinary piece of fiction. Written in pitch-perfect historical register, richly evoking a mid-19th-century world of shipping and banking and goldrush boom and bust, it is also a ghost story, and a gripping mystery. It is a thrilling achievement for someone still in her mid-20s, and will confirm for critics and listeners that Catton is one of the brightest stars in the international writing firmament.

Eleanor Catton was born in 1985 in Canada and raised in New Zealand. She completed an MA in Creative Writing at Victoria University in 2007 and won the Adam Prize in Creative Writing for The Rehearsal. She was the recipient of the 2008 Glenn Schaeffer Fellowship to study for a year at the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop in the US and went on to hold a position as Adjunct Professor of Creative Writing there, teaching Creative Writing and Popular Culture. Eleanor won a 2010 New Generation Award. She now lives in Wellington, New Zealand.

©2013 Eleanor Catton (P)2013 Audible Ltd

Critic reviews

"The Luminaries is an impressive novel, captivating, intense and full of surprises." (Times Literary Supplement)

"The Luminaries is a breathtakingly ambitious 800-page mystery with a plot as complex and a cast as motley as any 19th-century doorstopper. That Catton's absorbing, hugely elaborate novel is at its heart so simple is a great part of its charm. Catton's playful and increasingly virtuosic denouement arrives at a conclusion that is as beautiful as it is triumphant." (Daily Mail)

"It is awesomely - even bewilderingly - intricate. There's an immaculate finish to Catton's prose, which is no mean feat in a novel that lives or dies by its handling of period dialogue. It's more than 800 pages long but the reward for your stamina is a double-dealing world of skullduggery traced in rare complexity. Those Booker judges will have wrists of steel if it makes the shortlist, as it fully deserves." (Evening Standard)

Engaging complicated plot

It was a challenge to keep straight all the characters with their back-stories and interconnections, but that is part of what made this such an engaging book. I cringed at the racism exhibited by some of the characters, but I think that the author was describing in reality at the times depicted.

The narrator was one of the best I have encountered so far. His ability to render the various characters in distinct voices was truly amazing.

Great read

I saw the Starz series and while that was worth a watch, it plodded a bit. What blew me away was the story, so I searched out the book and was not disappointed. This is a well-rounded read, beautifully written, with terrific pacing, always keeps track of what could have been a sprawling storyline and brings all the threads together in a very satisfying way. It is narrated masterfully by Mark Meadows.

Complex to follow

I generally enjoyed the book but it was definitely hard to get into and a bit hard to follow. I believe this to be one of the few times when reading an actual book would have been helpful particularly if it had a map of characters.

Engrossing story; beautifully narrated

I've had this book sitting on my bedside table for months; I finally broke down and got the audio book. I'm so glad I did. It's completely and totally engrossing--I was glad it was so long just because I was enjoying the story so much! After the Hillary Mantel books, probably my favorite Booker winner in a long time. The narrator is fabulous--he does accents incredibly well and in all but a few cases pronounces the Maori words accurately, which is a rarity. One quibble: Unless the pronunciation was different in the 19th century, Hokitika is pronounced Hoe-ka-tick-a, not Hah-ka-tee-ka; since that town is mentioned many, many, many times, the mispronunciation is a bit grating, but otherwise, his performance really makes the story come alive.

Literally Dickensian

This is an outstanding second novel from this young woman. It has all the hallmarks of a Dickensian novel; complex plot, numerous characters, intrigue, a Court case, coincidence, violence and era. The characters are well developed caricatures; Carver is the malevolent villain, Lydia the scheming widower, Anna the innocent girl gone astray and Moody the son stepping out of his father's dark shadow.
I agree with other reviewers that a List of Characters is essential (so I got myself a copy from the front of the printed text - it's not yet on Wiki), but I disagree that the diagrams in the text are at all helpful. The diagrams only make sense if you can read astrological charts (which I cannot) and I suggest are more confusing than enlightening.
I also agree that the tale is too long. It could easily have ended after the trial. Sure, there would have been loose ends, but there were some anyway (what happened to Moody's father, for example). The conceit of the structure (very clever, admittedly) would have suffered, but not the novel. I read an extract of an interview with the author where she postulated that the structure-plot tension was part of an experiment to see if the former could be maintained without expense to the latter. On the evidence of this attempt, I would answer the question, "No".
As for the performance, I thought Mark Meadows did a sterling job. His narrator's voice reminds me of Jack Davenport (from "Coupling"), or perhaps Arthur Dent's voice from the BBC version of "Hitchhiker's Guide", while his Lauderback was Roland Coleman-like (or perhaps more accurately, Don Adams mimicking Coleman). His female characterisations were good, too, but even he could not capture the difficult to credit transition of Anna from innocent to whore and back again.
Overall, the title is well worth the listen to about the end of Part 8 or 9. After that, I don't think you will miss much in the way of plot, except for the frustration of the summary being longer than the chapter that follows.

Best of the Year

(At least so far). The book itself is epic, haunting and beautiful, filled with fascinating characters. The audio narration is surprisingly good considering the range of dialects, accents and ethnicities portrayed. Happily the narrator never loses focus from the suspenseful, convoluted and complex plot. I have read the novel twice now, and the audio is a worthy addition. Fast, fresh and funny. A memorable wallow in the "old west" of New Zealand.

Beautifully crafted, but .....

4-*
I really liked this book until I got to the (seriously) waning portion, Part Nine, onwards. The first quarter of the book had shades of Wilkie Collins in it - an involved 19th century mystery with lots(!) of characters, a wronged woman (a prostitute), a fortune at stake, and some seriously shady bad guys -then the last quarter seemed to race towards a less than stellar ending for me. Perhaps if I was more au fait with the astrology thrust of the book, or had someone to explain that aspect clearly to me, I would have enjoyed it more.
I was tempted to give it 3*, but since I enjoyed three-quarters of the book I gifted it the extra star.
(Here's the 'but': It's so well written, just, for me, it felt like a "meh" way to end such a beautifully crafted book).

This is a clean read, for others that like to know things like that too: The story does have an opium taking, totally likeable, whore as one of the central characters. No gratuitous or steamy sex scenes, just an ambling along, loooong, read.

Terrific book, wonderfully woven tales

This is my second listening. The reader does an amazing job with the voices and this complex story unfolds like an origami box.

A captivating tale, beautifully written

I did enjoy this book. The narrator did a great job bringing it to life. Ms Catton has written a story that lingers in the memory after creating a vivid snap-shot of life on the 19th century New Zealand gold fields. It starts from small beginnings and gradually more and more characters and their stories (and perspectives/involvement) are added. It's really well written book and certainly has a poignancy to it.

A Dickensian tale of New Zealand gold rush confusion

A valiant attempt at the style of Charles Dickens (Tale of Two Cities) or evening Hugo but a dozen too many similar characters of white men, the cookie cutter female villainess and the obligatory dimwitted prostitute set against a zodiac calendar that was put in a blender = a need for a much needed editor.