The Luminaries: A Novel

"Eleanor Catton won the Booker Prize back in 2013 with this vast historical novel set in 1860s New Zealand, in which a gold prospector seeking his fortune stumbles into a web of murder and deceit in a frontier town. The novel itself is structured around the astrological calendar—each plot point reflecting some movement in the real-life sky during the period in which the story unfolds. The Luminaries features fortune tellers, prostitutes, merchants, magnates and a Maori gemstone hunter, and it is, as New York Times reviewer Bill Roorbach declared , “a lot of fun, like doing a Charlotte Brontë-themed crossword puzzle while playing chess and Dance Dance Revolution on a Bongo Board.” If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. “Some readers will delight in the challenge, others may despair.” This is not a book that’s easily picked up and put down again, in other words—but a project, perhaps to be read over a long journey or a period of gardening leave."