November 15, 2013

The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton



Eleanor Catton

Eleanor Catton was born in 1985 in Canada and raised in New Zealand.

She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she also held an adjunct professorship, and an MA in fiction writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters. She currently lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Her debut novel The Rehearsal (2008) was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize, and longlisted for the Orange Prize. It has since been published in 17 territories and 12 languages. Her latest novel The Luminaries (2013) is longlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize.   



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 twelve 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. It is full of narrative, linguistic and psychological pleasures, and has a fiendishly clever and original structuring device. 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 and will confirm for critics and readers that Catton is one of the brightest stars in the international writing firmament.

 

1 comment:

  1. Twelve men in a room unknowingly yet serendipitously interrupted by a thirteenth; was this meeting written in the stars?

    Though long at over 800 pages, the story and the pace of the writing never slows down. The characters are well fleshed out and the prose is brilliant.

    Though I enjoyed the book, I bought it as a combo offer on all the Booker Prize Nominees Flipkart had. I was more moved by We Need New Names by Noviolet Bulawayo and A Tale for the Time Being by Rugh Ozeki. Had I read this as a stand-alone book perhaps, I'd have been more impressed.

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