The Luminaries
Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780771023248 (0771023243)
Publish date: September 2nd 2014
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Pages no: 848
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 ...