How long is it?
848 pages in the Little, Brown Paperbacks 2014 trade paperback edition.
Fiction · Novel · Literary Fiction · Historical Fiction
The Luminaries
Highly regardedBooker Prize, 2013Reading facts
✓ Checked- Reading effort
- 64 / 100High
- Length
- 848 pagesLittle, Brown Paperbacks · 2014
- Reading time
- 17 hat 50 pages an hour ·
- Pace
- Measured
- Emotional intensity
- 3 / 5
About 17 h · at 30 minutes a day, about 34 days
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
About the book
Arriving in Hokitika, New Zealand, during the gold rush of 1866, Walter Moody interrupts twelve men discussing a disappearance, a woman's collapse and a dead recluse's unexplained fortune. Wealthy Emery Staines is missing, Anna Wetherell has been found unconscious, and Crosbie Wells has left behind money nobody can explain. Each man holds part of the story, but their livelihoods and reputations complicate what they are willing to tell.
Reader notes
Deliberately Victorian in manner, the historical mystery unfolds through overlapping testimony and an elaborate astrological design; keeping track of its cast and revisited events takes concentration. Opium addiction and abuse are serious subjects, while a significant love story keeps sex off the page.
How it reads
- Writing style
- Atmospheric · Descriptive
- Tone
- Atmospheric · Cerebral · Dark · Suspenseful
- Structure
- Framed · Nonlinear
- Driven by
- Character · Mystery
- Point of view
- Multiple viewpoints · Third person, omniscient
- Setting
- Hokitika, New Zealand
Reading complexity
- Writing
- 3 / 5
- Ideas
- 3 / 5
- Structure
- 5 / 5
- Background knowledge
- 1 / 5
About this profile
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
- Writing
- How much attention the sentences and language require.
- Ideas
- How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
- Structure
- How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
- Background knowledge
- Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
- Emotional intensity
- Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.
Themes
- Ambition
- Knowledge and truth
- Morality
- Revenge
- Wealth
Content notes
- Violence
- Mild
- Sexual content
- Mild
- Swearing
- Mild
- Substance use
- Strong
- Abuse
- Strong
- Self-harm or suicide
- Mild
Standing and awards
Highly regarded
- Booker Prize, 2013
- Governor General's Award for English-language fiction, 2013
- Dylan Thomas Prize shortlist, 2014
- Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction shortlist, 2014
Questions readers ask
Which edition is shown here?
Little, Brown Paperbacks · 2014 · Trade Paperback. ISBN 9780316074292.
How long does it take to read The Luminaries?
About 17 hours at 50 pages an hour, based on the 848-page Little, Brown Paperbacks edition. Dense books can take longer.
About the author
Eleanor Catton
Eleanor Catton is a New Zealand novelist and screenwriter whose fiction favors elaborate structures, shifting perspectives, and plots in which information becomes a form of leverage. She often places characters inside closed social systems, then tracks how performance, secrecy, and material ambition alter their accounts of events. The Rehearsal moves between a school scandal and theatrical training, blurring confession with performance. The Luminaries expands that method into an ornate historical mystery, arranging overlapping testimony and a large cast through an astrological design in gold-rush Hokitika. In Birnam Wood, the machinery is faster and more openly political, bringing an activist gardening collective into collision with wealth, surveillance, and ecological crisis. Catton also works in adaptation, including the screenplay for Emma.
If you liked this
Edition and details
- Publisher
- Little, Brown Paperbacks
- Publication year
- 2014
- Format
- Trade Paperback
- Pages
- 848
- ISBN
- 9780316074292
- Edition language
- English
- Original language
- English
- First published
- 2013
- Genres and form
- Fiction · Novel · Literary Fiction · Historical Fiction · Mystery & Thriller · Adventure · Historical fiction · Historical mystery
- Editions
- 15
- Languages
- 5 (German, English, French, Hebrew, Unspecified)