The Luminaries
From the acclaimed author of The Rehearsal comes a novel about a young woman on trial for murder in nineteenth-century New Zealand.On a blustery January day, a prostitute is arrested. In the midst of the 1866 gold rush on the coast of New Zealand, this might have gone unnoticed. But three notable...
show more
From the acclaimed author of The Rehearsal comes a novel about a young woman on trial for murder in nineteenth-century New Zealand.On a blustery January day, a prostitute is arrested. In the midst of the 1866 gold rush on the coast of New Zealand, this might have gone unnoticed. But three notable events occur on that same day: a luckless drunk dies, a wealthy man vanishes, and a ship's captain of ill repute cancels all of his business and weighs anchor, as if making an escape. Anna Wetherell, the prostitute in question, is connected to all three men. This sequence of apparently coincidental events provokes a secret council of powerful townsmen to investigate. But they are interrupted by the arrival of a stranger: young Walter Moody, who has a secret of his own...THE LUMINARIES is an intricately crafted feat of storytelling, a mystery that reveals the ways our interconnected lives reshape our destinies.
show less
Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9780316074315 (0316074314)
ASIN: 316074314
Publish date: October 15th 2013
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Pages no: 834
Edition language: English
Category:
Novels,
Literature,
Cultural,
Book Club,
Adult Fiction,
Historical Fiction,
Literary Fiction,
Adult,
Mystery,
Contemporary,
Canada
This was an epic novel. Reading this in quarantine, when I have the attention span of a flea, was a challenge given its length, but honestly, it was worth the effort. Beautifully written with a wealth of interesting, original characters, the book was genre defying— a Wild West tale dressed up as the...
Let's start this review with something that's just housekeeping, not criticism. I read this book as part of a CanLit project. It won the (Canadian) Governor General's award, after all. But this is CanLit only by the most attenuated of courtesies; Catton may have been born in Canada, but she grew up ...
My god, I made it. Eleanor Catton’s Booker Prize-winning first novel is not for the faint-hearted. It is long. And I mean long. It’s also historical fiction, which really isn’t my bag, but ten minutes in, I was hooked. It’s set in New Zealand in 1866 and follows a group of men in a small frontier go...
I am applying the 50-page test to this one: I'm on page 57 and ambivalent. On the positive side, there's very good writing, keen observation, and an interesting setting (New Zealand in 1866, during a gold rush). On the negative side, I'd managed to overlook that this is a mystery and a ghost story, ...
70. THE LUMINARIES, BY ELEANOR CATTONAnother recommendation by mysamwise! And I have to say, I liked this one much better... But we’ve already covered that. Onto this one!Synopsis: Walter Moody, recently almost destitute and at odds with his family, arrives upon the shores of New Zealand hoping to ...