Sorry, I can’t summarize the plot of Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries for you. It’s got more plot strands than that braid. It’s an enjoyable read but . . . Whew!

I can tell you about the place: New Zealand in the 1860s. They’re having a gold rush. And a lot of rain. And mud. While living in tents. In fact, the most dignified houses in town have cloth walls. Evidently, in a gold rush, everything gets rushed.

I can tell you about the people: there are politicians, pimps, whores, prospectors, Chinese laborers, aggrieved Maoris, scar-faced villains.

I can tell you about the gold: there’s plenty of it. Or there’s none of it. People pan for it, bank it, hide it, check their stash, find it missing.

I can tell you about money: politicians use it before widows can rush to town to claim it.

There are guns: going off, or aimed at you and not going off.

There is opium: smoked daily, or sworn off of, used as medicine, used as currency.

There is family revenge. There are back-alley beatings. There are ships running aground in the harbor.

Plus more rain, more mud, more dirty dealing.

How on earth did Catton plot this thing?

 

Braid photo credit: Wicker Paradise via Visual hunt / CC BY