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