
The Luminaries
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Narrated by:
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Mark Meadows
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By:
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Eleanor Catton
About this listen
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.
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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)
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It is no good being a beauty alone...
- By Darwin8u on 02-24-16
By: Anthony Powell
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The God of Small Things
- By: Arundhati Roy
- Narrated by: Sneha Mathan
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Likened to the works of Faulkner and Dickens when it was first published 20 years ago, this extraordinarily accomplished debut novel is a brilliantly plotted story of forbidden love and piercing political drama, centered on the tragic decline of an Indian family in the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India. Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, the twins Rahel and Esthappen fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family.
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Worthy Booker winner!
- By Saman on 08-10-17
By: Arundhati Roy
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Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All
- A New Zealand Story
- By: Christina Thompson
- Narrated by: Sarah Mollo-Christensen
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is the story of the cultural collision between Westerners and the Maoris of New Zealand, told partly as a history of the complex and bloody period of contact between Europeans and the Maoris in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and partly as the story of Christina Thompson's marriage to a Maori man.
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a beautiful story
- By Pumpkin99 on 12-24-22
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Milkman
- By: Anna Burns
- Narrated by: Bríd Brennan
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister, our protagonist, is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman. But when first brother-in-law sniffs out her struggle and rumours start to swell, middle sister becomes "interesting" - the last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed, and to be noticed is dangerous. Milkman is a tale of gossip and hearsay, silence and deliberate deafness. It is a story of inaction with enormous consequences.
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Like the writing, not the audio issues
- By Criticalthinker on 12-31-18
By: Anna Burns
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The Recognitions
- By: William Gaddis
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 47 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Wyatt Gwyon's desire to forge is not driven by larceny but from love. Exactingly faithful to the spirit and letter of the Flemish masters, he produces uncannily accurate "originals" - pictures the painters themselves might have envied. In an age of counterfeit emotion and taste, the real and fake have become indistinguishable; yet Gwyon's forgeries reflect a truth that others cannot touch - cannot even recognize.
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Breathtaking, Dizzying, Stimulating, Funny
- By andrew on 11-17-10
By: William Gaddis
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The Blind Assassin
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margot Dionne
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental.
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Good book, TERRIBLE audio!
- By Whitney on 04-27-09
By: Margaret Atwood
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Last Orders
- By: Graham Swift
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble, Gigi Marceau Clarke, Jenny Sterlin, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In a London Pub called The Coach and Horses, four men gather. Three of them have been friends for half a lifetime, having fought in the same war, drunk in the same pubs, and bet on the same horses. Now they have come together to deliver the ashes of a fifth man, Jack Dodds, to the sea. Their journey, which will take them deep into their collective and individual pasts, lies at the center of an astonishingly moving novel of friendship, memory, and fate.
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Don't hesitate
- By Robert on 03-23-06
By: Graham Swift
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The Ghost Bride
- A Novel
- By: Yangsze Choo
- Narrated by: Yangsze Choo
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Li Lan, the daughter of a genteel but bankrupt family, has few prospects. But fate intervenes when she receives an unusual proposal from the wealthy and powerful Lim family. They want her to become a ghost bride for the family's only son, who recently died under mysterious circumstances. After an ominous visit to the opulent Lim mansion, Li Lan finds herself haunted not only by her ghostly would-be suitor, but also by her desire for the Lims' handsome new heir, Tian Bai. Li Lan must uncover the Lim family's darkest secrets before she is trapped in this ghostly world forever.
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Muddled
- By L on 06-01-19
By: Yangsze Choo
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True History of the Kelly Gang
- By: Peter Carey
- Narrated by: Gianfranco Negroponte
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Ned Kelly's name resonates in Australia the same way the name Jesse James does in America. Was he a crusading folk hero or murderous horse thief and bank robber? Who was the real Ned Kelly? As the impoverished son of an Irish convict, Kelly was cheated, lied to, and abused by the English. Committed to fighting back against oppression, Kelly and his gang of outlaws eluded police for nearly two years.
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An 'adjectival' masterpiece of 'effing' prose.
- By Darwin8u on 05-21-12
By: Peter Carey
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The Gathering
- By: Anne Enright
- Narrated by: Terry Donnelly
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Regarded as one of her country's foremost voices, Irish author Anne Enright makes a fresh mark on a rich literary tradition. The Gathering is a deeply insightful family saga, steeped in secrets and intrigue, unfolding over three generations.
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Not For Everyone
- By Lori on 11-07-08
By: Anne Enright
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The Bee Sting
- A Novel
- By: Paul Murray
- Narrated by: Heather O’Sullivan, Barry Fitzgerald, Beau Holland, and others
- Length: 26 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under—but Dickie is spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewelry on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attention of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter, Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge drink her way through her final exams. As for twelve-year-old PJ, he’s on the brink of running away.
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Bone Clocks meets Jonathan Franzen
- By Cranson on 10-26-23
By: Paul Murray
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The Promise
- By: Damon Galgut
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Haunted by an unmet promise, the Swart family loses touch after the death of their matriarch. Adrift, the lives of the three siblings move separately through the uncharted waters of South Africa; Anton, the golden boy who bitterly resents his life’s unfulfilled potential; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by a nebulous feeling of guilt.
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Excellent novel
- By ALG on 11-09-21
By: Damon Galgut
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This Other Eden
- By: Paul Harding
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. Over a century later, the Honeys’ descendants and a diverse group of neighbors are desperately poor, isolated, and often hungry, but nevertheless protected from the hostility awaiting them on the mainland.
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Painfully overwritten
- By WPH on 02-24-23
By: Paul Harding
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Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
- By: Hernan Diaz
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marnò, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
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Before Purchasing
- By JLDLOfficial on 08-13-22
By: Hernan Diaz
This is not a complaint, or to say I did not like the book. It is captivating and elaborately constructed with a great sense of place and time. The period details are transportive, in the beginning feeling much like a good Dickens pastiche. The characters, as many as there are months of the year, are each an astrological sign, or house, and the characteristics assigned to those distinctions, which she uses to prefix each chapter, as well as explain whom is in whose house, etc. Catton also enjoys some word-play in this complex production of writing and architecture -- writing each chapter with exactly half the words as the preceding chapter. All these pieces of construction are exceptionally ambitious and creative, but can be confusing and mentally labor intensive. (There is no explanation given in the audible version; I came to these realizations after banging my head against the wall for a couple of days, and relentlessly texting Darwin on the matter.)
Catton has definitely written an interesting novel, and written, and written, and belabored the plot until I just lost interest and wanted to move forward to a finish instead of reviewing, again, the events as told by each of the 12 characters involved. I would go into synopsis of the book, but then you'd have to hear the same plot from THIRTEEN points of view, instead of a mere TWELVE. Sophisticated intelligence, beautiful prose, and intricate plotting, become less so when redundant and complicated.
(A big) -- However... a friend tells me this is a book I would absolutely love if I read the book, which contains charts, graphs, and a very important list of characters, all adding clarity and an ease to the read, as well as beautifully tying in the astrological twist. For clarification, I did not like the book as I experienced it audibly, but I did recognize the talent and creativity enough to consider picking up the book and giving it another chance. It's is going to take me a while before I'm ready to tackle all 30 hours of this again. A consideration for those still undecided. Hopefully, a little understanding before going in will be helpful.
Not So Luminous
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That being said, after reading the synopsis of this book, I decided to read it anyway. It sounded new and different. But I was disheartened by all of the negative reviews. Again, I decided to read it anyway. And I'm glad I did.
The characters are rich and well developed. And although there are a lot of them, it's not difficult to keep them all straight because of their individuality.
Something that everyone is talking about is the astrological formula Ms. Catton used. While I agree that it does sound like a creative writing class prompt, I do not consider that a bad thing. What does it matter how you get there? It only matters that what you have when you get there is something you're proud of, and, hopefully, something that people want to read. I think she has been successful on both counts. To me, the astrological aspect didn't matter a great deal over all. That is to say, it neither added nor subtracted from the story.
I'm happy with the time I spent listening to this book. It allowed me to look at a time and place I generally would have to reason to consider.
I almost let the reviews keep me from a good book
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What made the experience of listening to The Luminaries the most enjoyable?
I went into this book for the historical fiction and came out of it thinking, that of the thousands of books I've read, this was truly written in the most original way.Any additional comments?
The authour, by tying the character sections into the state of the moon, writing shorter sections as the moon waned, kept things moving along. At the end, a flashback explains all.What a great, original book
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The book is Dickensian in scope and 19th Century in narrative style, which befits the subject, but it needed a good editor. The writing is very good, but the story jumps around in time to no purpose, and is numbingly repetitive. The last quarter of the book does little more than show in action what we already know from hearsay and narration, and leaves a few loose ends that would have given a more satisfying resolution.
Brilliant Narration but Book Needs an Editor
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Would you consider the audio edition of The Luminaries to be better than the print version?
I feel a little sorry for anyone who reads the print version because they would be deprived of the enjoyment of Mark Meadows brilliant work. So many varied characters and yet the listener knew exactly who was speaking every time.In addition, the wonderful language of the book, a vocabulary from the past made one feel that book had been written in 1865! That may not be everyone's cup of tea but I enjoyed it enormously.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Emory Stains, even though he appeared late was refreshingly gentle and open. His appearance seemed to light up the place.Which character – as performed by Mark Meadows – was your favorite?
That would be impossible to say. All interpretations were wonderful.If you could take any character from The Luminaries out to dinner, who would it be and why?
Anna Weatheral because I would like to know more about life for women in that era.Absorbing, Mystifying, Wonderful
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brilliant!
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ok
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Where does The Luminaries rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
One of the best audiobooks I've listened to.What does Mark Meadows bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Mark Meadows managed the difficult task of so many characters and varied accents with consumate skill.Brilliant read, top story
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The plot is so intricate, you'll want to concentrate to keep track of it, but it's so clever, I was amazed it was her first novel.
Wonerful narration
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Any additional comments?
Mark Meadows did an admirable job of distinguishing between the many characters in The Luminaries with various accents and tones. Even the women came off well, each pleasingly voiced in their unique way. It is the story itself that kept my head spinning. Without the artifice of the astrological signs, longitudes, latitudes, etc. it is still quite a puzzle to solve. I needed a book in front of me for reference.More suited to reading rather than listening
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