The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
Eleanor Catton came to prominence with her 2007 debut, The Rehearsal, which won international acclaim, and was awarded The Betty Trask Award, and a long-listing for the Orange Prize in 2010. There was, then, high expectation for her second novel. Before it had even been published in the UK, that second novel, The Luminaries, had been long-listed for the Man Booker Prize 2013. Coming in at over 800 pages, The Luminaries is a complex, multi-layered novel that owes a debt to both Dickens and Wilkie Collins, but yet feels fresh, thrilling and very modern despite its 1860s setting. Opening in January 1866, Walter Moody has just disembarked off Godspeed, a barque that has bought him to Hokitika on the west coast of New Zealand where a gold rush is forcing towns to spring out of the barren landscape. He checks into the Crown Hotel where, unbeknown to him, 12 men have gathered. As Moody is quietly interrogated, he reveals to men that he can be t...