1866. The New Zealand gold rush.
Walter Moody has just stepped off a boat on the New Zealand coast. A London gentleman, he's come to try his hand at gold prospecting and hopes to make a small fortune to send back to his mother.
Finally settling into his hotel, he decides to go down to the smoking room to relax. But when he does, he interrupts a private conference of twelve very different men. Soon, he's drawn into their confidence and learns of a recent death, a disappearance, a drugging, and a suddenly discovered fortune.
As more startling revelations and connections draw the men together, Moody tells his own tale - of a ghost he saw on the ship he just stepped off of.
I've never found historical fiction to be that gripping. I find that too many novels are more focused on the historical details and not the characters actually living in that time period. But The Luminaries won the Man Booker, so I thought I'd give it a try.
I'm glad I did. This book comes in at around 830 pages, but I flew through it. It did what other novels set in past time periods often do not: it uses the time period, rather than simply describing it. The story couldn't have happened anywhere other than the New Zealand gold rush of the 1860's.
And what a picture Catton paints - a frontier almost like America's Wild West, but with a treacherous coast of water and a more refined sensibility brought by the Brits who traveled there.
The cast of characters is large, varied, and wondrously depicted. Each character is flawed, each has moments of redemption, each has relatable motivations and desires. They each feel fully realized and three-dimensional. There wasn't a single character I loved more than the others (although there were some I disliked or pitied more), and I count this a great skill.
This is a murder mystery (though less of a whodunit than why), a love story, a plot of revenge, a gripping tale on the edge of the world, with gold flakes and intrigue dusting every page. Wonderful prose and characterization, along with the homage to astrology and the zodiac, make The Luminaries shine bright.
8/10 📕