The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton – review
Catton's epic novel about the New Zealand goldrush has been shortlisted for the Man Booker prize. Kirsty Gunn weighs up an intricately crafted shaggy dog story
Wednesday 11 September 2013
E
leanor Catton is an extraordinary writer. Her first novel, The Rehearsal, was a marvellously peculiar and technically perfect story of a story within a story – or stories, actually – that had the reader's mind spinning with the complexities of its narrative invention. The plot – a group of teenage girls acting out the consequences of a sex scandal at their school – was set loose from the very premise of storytelling. Whether what was taking place on the page was an account of events or only words in a script, no more than a rehearsal for what may or may not have happened … none of it mattered. It was wild.
