Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
The Luminaries  By  cover art

The Luminaries

By: Eleanor Catton
Narrated by: Mark Meadows
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $24.54

Buy for $24.54

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

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)

What listeners say about The Luminaries

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    872
  • 4 Stars
    726
  • 3 Stars
    444
  • 2 Stars
    210
  • 1 Stars
    170
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1,247
  • 4 Stars
    480
  • 3 Stars
    211
  • 2 Stars
    85
  • 1 Stars
    74
Story
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    769
  • 4 Stars
    583
  • 3 Stars
    405
  • 2 Stars
    216
  • 1 Stars
    156

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Too clever by half

Destined to join that long and distinguished line of celebrated, and unread, novels?

Eleanor Catton is a fine writer, but seemingly steeped in the school of the nineteenth century masters. Her language and skills of prose are evident, but over the heads of the average reader today (I count myself included).

The 'astrology' theme, and the waning/waxing phases of the moon, in which the plot is structured is clearly beyond my ability - and inclination - to comprehend.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Awful!

Based on all the great reviews I had really high hopes for this book but I just did something I have never done before. I turned this book off and there is no way I am finishing it. After nearly 5 hours it has gone no where, and accomplished nothing!

In addition to the painfully slow plot line, the narrator is so monotonous I want to stick red hot pokers in my ears.

I know that a lot of people liked this book and that my one sour review is not likely to sway anyone from listening to it but don't say I didn't tell you so if you decide to embark on this perilous journey through tedium.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent novel made more exceptional be narrator

A wonderful, captivating story that could've gone on even longer. Simply fantastic. Excellent novel made more exceptional be narrator.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Sadistic treatment of the reader

I wasted 30 hours thinking that eventually the hard to follow plot would come together. instead, having evidently run out of time or space or her advance, Catton tries to wrap it up in a chapter heading (!) at the end. Authorial malpractice.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Amazing!!

Both the writing and the narration perfectly evoke the feeling of a mining town flush with gold, mystery and drama. The circuitous route by which the characters and their back stories are introduced and tied together keeps the interest level high. As more and more details are revealed and your first impressions are challenged and turned on end you will find yourself wanting to reach the end just so that you can re-read this tale again and catch any clues that you missed on your first go-round.

This book has found a permanent home on my bookshelf as I know that I will be re-reading it over and over. I highly recommend it to fans of Historical Fiction, Mystery, and Drama as it has plenty of all three.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

It was great until the last chapter

While this is definitely a book that falls into the ponderous genre, it still had just enough pace to keep me interested. It created a world that was full of detail and it seemed very real. Yet it is is not perfectly formed. When the last chapter finished I had to look at the paper version to see if something had gone wrong. While some may call the ending different, it has all the hallmarks of a student rushing a paper where they have run out of time. I was left dissatisfied.
To finish on a positive note, the reader of this book was excellent, getting the many accents spot on.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

needlessly obscure

7 hours in I still really didn't know who the characters were, and more importantly just didn't care. The non linear structure didn't bother me as much as the fact that there was no real protagonist. No one was really likable or all that interesting. I thought the story was needlessly complex and unjustifiably, self consciously obscure. If you're going to make something "hard to figure out" there has to be a payoff somewhere, and after 7 hours I still hadn't found one. So I just gave up. There are far better books around , despite the excellent writing.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

What a great, original book

What made the experience of listening to The Luminaries the most enjoyable?

I went into this book for the historical fiction and came out of it thinking, that of the thousands of books I've read, this was truly written in the most original way.

Any additional comments?

The authour, by tying the character sections into the state of the moon, writing shorter sections as the moon waned, kept things moving along. At the end, a flashback explains all.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Very disappointing read

Any additional comments?

Only my stubbornness in never abandoning a book made me listen to the bitter end. I love long books, but the only thing that deserved a star was the narrator. The bouncing back and forth was often unclear and confusing, and constant astronomical and astrological references made no sense and contributed nothing. The trial was interesting, but that's about it. The ending was terrible. What a disappointment!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

One of the best performances by a narrator

The story is good and worth the 23+ hours but I had to write this review to praise the narrator for such a wonderful job. There are about 16 different characters with all types of accents; Scottish, Irish, Australian, French, etc. He mastered them all and I could always tell who was talking based on the voice. I think this is quite a feat with this particular book. I seldom notice the narrator unless they are very bad, but I wish I could give this one 6 stars.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful