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The Luminaries

By: Eleanor Catton
Narrated by: Mark Meadows
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Publisher's Summary

Longlisted – Baileys Women’s Prize 2014

Man Booker Prize, Fiction, 2013

Canadian Governor General's Literary Award, 2013.

It is 1866 and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of 12 local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a whore 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.

The Luminaries is an extraordinary piece of fiction. Written in pitch-perfect historical register, richly evoking a mid-19th-century world of shipping and banking and goldrush boom and bust, it is also a ghost story, and a gripping mystery. It is a thrilling achievement for someone still in her mid-20s, and will confirm for critics and listeners that Catton is one of the brightest stars in the international writing firmament.

Eleanor Catton was born in 1985 in Canada and raised in New Zealand. She completed an MA in Creative Writing at Victoria University in 2007 and won the Adam Prize in Creative Writing for The Rehearsal. She was the recipient of the 2008 Glenn Schaeffer Fellowship to study for a year at the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop in the US and went on to hold a position as Adjunct Professor of Creative Writing there, teaching Creative Writing and Popular Culture. Eleanor won a 2010 New Generation Award. She now lives in Wellington, New Zealand.

©2013 Eleanor Catton (P)2013 Audible Ltd

Critic Reviews

"The Luminaries is an impressive novel, captivating, intense and full of surprises." (Times Literary Supplement)

"The Luminaries is a breathtakingly ambitious 800-page mystery with a plot as complex and a cast as motley as any 19th-century doorstopper. That Catton's absorbing, hugely elaborate novel is at its heart so simple is a great part of its charm. Catton's playful and increasingly virtuosic denouement arrives at a conclusion that is as beautiful as it is triumphant." (Daily Mail)

"It is awesomely - even bewilderingly - intricate. There's an immaculate finish to Catton's prose, which is no mean feat in a novel that lives or dies by its handling of period dialogue. It's more than 800 pages long but the reward for your stamina is a double-dealing world of skullduggery traced in rare complexity. Those Booker judges will have wrists of steel if it makes the shortlist, as it fully deserves." (Evening Standard)

What listeners say about The Luminaries

Average Customer Ratings
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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great tale, but...

Wonderful story but I'll have to read the book as I can’t stomach any more of the awful pronunciation and bewildering wrong accents.
This is a a tale of New Zealand so you would think the narrator would be chosen based on their understanding of New Zealand.
The horrid accent attributed to Te Rau Tauwhare swings between South African and Australian, never Maori, the pronunciation of common words such as Pakeha is so far from the mark that at first, you're not sure what they're referring to.

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27 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Loved it!

There were so many things about this book that I would have normally hated - the era, the gold rushes, too many male characters - but I LOVED this book!!! I was interested the whole way through, the characters were amazing and I loved and hated them intensely and alternately. The setting was made so vivid I felt that I could HEAR the birds, the gunshots, the voices... The magnificent things about this book though was that the author used the changing points of view to play with the passage of time so as to make the reader feel that they are JUST behind the action, JUST on the cusp of discovering the mystery - it kept me gripped from start to finish. The story and characters were an absolute feat of imagination - the twist and turns and the gasps as you realise what is about to happen just as it does. This book is an epic, in the best possible way. I would highly recommend it to anyone - even the readers who, like me, find the premise of it a bit dull on the surface.

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13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Best audiobook in ages

What made the experience of listening to The Luminaries the most enjoyable?

Wonderful story and reader

What did you like best about this story?

Complex and brilliantly wrought

Have you listened to any of Mark Meadows’s other performances? How does this one compare?

I am going to find other ones because he was great

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Epic story set in a small town

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11 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Excellence in prose and presentation

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Wow! An excellent narration of an outstanding literary work. I can highly recommend this audio book and I thank Mark Meadows for his brilliant rendition of such an intensely imaginative story, with such a wonderful array of accents, cultures, and genders. 10 out of 10.

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7 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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thoroughly enjoyed the story listened to it twice.

thoroughly enjoyed the story. I listened to it twice while working. highly recommend this book.

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5 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Without a doubt one of my favourites.

You will either love this book or loathe it. Thankfully I love it and I would have given it more stars had I the option.

The story at times can be hard to follow since there are many interwoven characters each with stories of their own. Sometimes the descriptions are very long winded but so beautifully written. And the timeline of the story does jump forwards and backwards a lot. But if you can survive those aspects of the novel then you will be able to enjoy the wonderful plot that unfolds.

I did find it best with the kindle book since I kept loosing track of who was who and where was what. It is a book that demands attention and the narrator does a fabulous job. I recommend it to those with patience and an appreciation for subtle beauty.

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4 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Engaging Story

Where does The Luminaries rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

In the high end, it was a clever series of believable coincidences and intertwining lives and people with depth and foibles, seen from many angles. You need to pay attention to remember who knows who and how.

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4 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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A captivating tale, beautifully written

I did enjoy this book. The narrator did a great job bringing it to life. Ms Catton has written a story that lingers in the memory after creating a vivid snap-shot of life on the 19th century New Zealand gold fields. It starts from small beginnings and gradually more and more characters and their stories (and perspectives/involvement) are added. It's really well written book and certainly has a poignancy to it.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Unforgettable

Spellbinding! It will become a movie. The characters live on the page and paint pictures that skilfully invite you in to join them.

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3 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

A very engaging listen

I found the audiobook interesting and engaging... The story is a bit trivial but the manner in which it is told is excellent... The story is presented through the eyes of the different characters... Sometimes the voice of the narrator pretending to be a female was a bit contrived but overall, I really enjoyed the audiobook.

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3 people found this helpful

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