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)

Not an average book

I give this book three stars not because I believe it is an "average" book, but because as I progressed through this novel I found myself either completely loving it or loathing it. I found the beginning very tedious, as there is an enormous cast of characters, and their melding, back-stories, interweaving, and relationship is a long and over detailed process. The beginning is a teeth gritting process and I actually had my doubts about continuing. I think the beginning is so hard because you do not really relate to any of the characters or feel for them until the middle of the book.

However by the middle of the book I'm hooked. The characters go from just telling stories to living the story and this is the best part. By the end, I love the flash backs and love that you get to know the dead man, for whom you think you know already. I am not sure if this book would ever be on my read again list but overall I enjoyed it.

Agatha Christie Meets Charles Dickens Meets Emily Bronte

What starts out as a gentle 19th century novel turned mystery quickly gathers continuing and irresistible momentum. It's an engaging, literary work posing as a modern page turner.

Best Book I've Listened to in 2013

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Excellent intricate storytelling. Complicated enough to engage your brain, but not so complicated you get lost in the audiobook format.

Needed to see astrological drawings

Really enjoyed this book, the characters and the history BUT after finishing I did some research and realized I had missed a lot by not being able to see the drawings and understanding the correlation between the stars and the story.

Delightful and clever

What other book might you compare The Luminaries to and why?

The Bones of Paris.
Another delightful twisting story about an age and place that little is written of.

Fortunes of Men and Two Women

The characterization is one of the most detailed I have ever enjoyed in 60 years of reading. Having watched the Starz series of the same name, I felt it necessary to read/hear the original text.

Long and drawn out

This book sounded great but I feel like it could have been told in a third as many pages and it would have been much better. The way the story was finally all out together at the end was not great either. Listening to it probably made it more difficult because I couldn't skim over parts that weren't important. I still feel like some of the story is completely unresolved.

fantastic!

narrator has exquisite accents from all over uk and nz. Looking fwd to more from this author

An Odd Ending

The narrator for this book was excellent and did a great job with so many accents. It was a pleasure to listen to this book.

I found the story very interesting and engaging until it dropped out at the end. I was left with the impression of the author scribbling the last 15 pages in the taxi on the way to the printing office as the deadline arrives. The novel was complex and well written for the majority of the story but so many threads seem to be left unaddressed. Overall I still liked this book. Maybe the author is leaving the door (wide) open for a sequel.

Long, detailed, lovely

A wonderful story with so many rich layers of detail. I am not sure I would have had the endurance to read the entire book, but I became positively addicted to having it read to me. The narration is brilliant!