Let's Discuss: The Luminaries: A Novel by Eleanor Catton--first half

20% off at Bookshop Santa Cruz for best sellers, or 15% off if you mention Ravenous Readers at the register or take the book off the book club wall. (It has a little tag in it for the cashier.) (And this particular book is quite inexpensive on Kindle, if you do that sort of thing. Also, "used" on Amazon.)

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Please bring $4 cash to pay for the room rental. You can bring water or any non-alcoholic beverage to drink during the meeting.

We're just discussing the FIRST HALF! Read through page 421. The second half is next month's selection.

The bestselling, Man Booker Prize-winning novel hailed as "a true achievement. Catton has built a lively parody of a 19th-century novel, and in so doing created a novel for the 21st, something utterly new. The pages fly."--New York Times Book Review

It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to stake his claim in New Zealand's booming gold rush. On the stormy night of his arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men who have met in secret to discuss a series of unexplained events: a wealthy man has vanished, a prostitute has tried to end her life, and an enormous cache of gold has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely ornate as the night sky.

Richly evoking a mid-nineteenth-century world of shipping, banking, and gold rush boom and bust, The Luminaries is at once a fiendishly clever ghost story, a gripping page-turner, and a thrilling novelistic achievement. It richly confirms that Eleanor Catton is one of the brightest stars in the international literary firmament.