I hadn't realized that this book was not only set in the 1800s but is also written in an engaging 19th-century style. loved it from the first page to the last conversation, in which the speakers are never identified, leaving the reader to determine what the words mean, and to whom. can't recommend this enough! ( )

More an exercise in meeting certain criteria (academia). Well written, but ultimately pointless ( )

Ghost story

The Luminaries is... delectable! Fumbling for the right word, I find myself thinking of what Lydia Wells would say, one of the characters so memorably brought to life in this staggering novel.

You may not like this book. If you don't have a yen for 800 page doorstoppers, elaborate 19th century structures and language styles, and dense thickets of plot, look elsewhere. (I'm not usually a fan of the latter, but if it comes packaged in the former, that rather changes my opinion.) If, however, you enjoy the heady combination of heightened language, courtroom (and behind-the-courtroom) drama, and historical fiction with a wry 21st century undercoat, this is for you. The Luminaries is also the beneficiary of a (pardon the pun) stellar audiobook narrated by Mark Meadows, who handles each of Catton's twenty-plus characters with panache. I rarely recommend the audio over the literary experience, but I think in this case, with the heavy emphasis on dialogue and narrative tone-of-voice, Meadows' performance amplifies and augments everything great in Catton's writing.

Exquisite. ( )

Eleanor Catton's Booker Prize-winning novel is essentially a Western set in New Zealand during the gold rush days. It's a complicated tale of plot and skullduggery centred on four contemporaneous events: the death of a hermit, the discovery of a sizeable and unexplained stash of gold, the disappearance of a wealthy miner and the arrest of a whore passed out on the road-side.

The novel starts with Walter Moody arriving in the gold mining town of Hokitika. He stumbles onto a covert meeting of 12 men, who are gathered to discuss these events. in a Rashomon-like fashion, Catton moves between narrators at this meeting to recount the mysterious events going on. It takes her about 350 pages to introduce her characters and set the scene, but there is so much going on here that it does not seem to drag at all.

The rest of the book delves into the background of the key characters and fleshes out the plot, gradually filling in the blanks and dramatically shifting our understanding of some of the characters in the process. This is artfully done so that while she adds a lot of detail, she does not give away too much too early.

Surprisingly for an 830 page book, the novel feels a bit rushed. After a gradual and expansive reveal of the plot, the last 100 pages is delivered in a staccato fashion that feels as if the author had changed gears and was rushing towards a deadline to get the remaining chapters done. Catton has also employed some kind of astrological symbolism in her chapter headings (hence the title) but it really did not seem worth bothering to decipher her meaning. Presumably there is a puzzle there, but I found it too distracting.

The book reminded me of nothing so much as the TV series Deadwood without the profanity, and perhaps this is its weakness. It seems to me to be just another vast Western genre novel; a rattling good story that people will really enjoy, but I don't think it has the literary merit you'd expect of a Booker Prize winner. ( )