Books that Hook: The Luminaries

Books that Hook

By Kalie Chamberlain

Our senior book reviews are written with the understanding that mature, sensible, premium-aged people may not want the bother of searching for well-written, sleaze-free reading materials—that’s why we’ve done the searching for you. We hope you enjoy this month’s pick.

This Month’s Fiction Selection: The Luminaries

Author: Eleanor Catton

Publisher: Little, Brown, and Co.

Length: 834 pages

Don’t be put off by the length of this book. The Luminaries reads like a classic Victorian mystery. On the surface, it is a suspenseful story, gilded with love, betrayal, gold fields, ghosts, mysterious appearances and disappearances, jealousy, and justice. But it is the marvelously creative structure of the book that caught the attention of the Man Booker Prize committee and that ultimately made New Zealand native Eleanor Catton the youngest author ever—at age 28—to win the Man Booker Prize.

In January 1866, Walter Moody arrives in Hokitika, New Zealand. During his sea passage, Moody has been party to the strangest experience of his life—an otherworldly experience he cannot understand. He arrives at the Crown Hotel, drenched and badly shaken, only to interrupt a private counsel held between 12 local men. When the men he meets at the Crown Hotel decide to take him into their confidence—relying on his objective view as an attorney and an outsider—he realizes that his strange vision may play a role in solving their mystery.

The richly imagined cast of characters lives against a sprawling and real landscape. Because the story is told from a variety of perspectives, the reader must decide what is the truth and whose words can be trusted. Beneath the surface of the story, more is at work than deception or self-interest. Catton, drawing on a long-time interest in astrology, allows the signs of the zodiac to direct and characterize the people in the book. Page by page, she unfolds a gripping tale that moves in motion with planetary bodies and the passage of time.

Widely accepted as one of the brightest and most promising authors in the world, Eleanor Catton has stunned readers and critics alike with The Luminaries. Already hailed as a New Zealand literary classic and set to be adapted as a BBC miniseries, The Luminaries is a bookish experience like no other.

You can borrow The Luminaries from your local library. Purchase it from a local bookseller or at www.amazon.com. Also available in e-book and audio book format.