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 ...

So Luminaries remains maybe the most beloved thing we've ever read at NUBClub. It's a long and complicated book, and there was a lot of time spent just clarifying how the plot came together. Essentially, Catton is weaving 12 characters around a zodiac metaphor that all come together to allow two young and mystically connected lovers to unite. The language is just breathtaking, and Catton does a wonderful job of exploring the New Zealand setting, ranging her story from Moari trader to Chinese merchants to English intellectuals. There is just so much care in the settings and the different perspectives of her characters that everyone feels rich and developed. And the love story is just incredible. The weaving path that Emery and Ana take to find each other and understand their feelings is like nothing we've ever read. There's just so much in this novel to unpack and so many wonderful moments to discover that there's no way to get into them all here. We know it's long. We know it's complicated. Read over the other reviews to see how rarely we are some universally enthusiastic about a book. It's brilliant. Read it.