This book was written in the stars...or at least with the stars in mind. Each character in this New Zealand gold rush epic corresponds to an astrological sign, and the plot is directly informed by planetary movements on 12 days in 1865. While built on certain cliches - the Taurus is a banker and as a Taurus I say: *eye roll* - style and plot are not victims of the contrived structure. Expect seances, opium dens, murder, shipwrecks, star-crossed lovers, and plenty of secrets.
— BekahWinner of the 2013 Man Booker Prize, a breathtaking feat of storytelling where everything is connected, but nothing is as it seems....
It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On the stormy night of his 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 prostitute 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.
Eleanor Catton was only 22 when she wrote The Rehearsal, which Adam Ross in the New York Times Book Review praised as "a wildly brilliant and precocious first novel" and Joshua Ferris called "a mesmerizing, labyrinthine, intricately patterned and astonishingly original novel." The Luminaries amply confirms that early promise, and secures Catton''''s reputation as one of the most dazzling and inventive young writers at work today.