Eleanor Catton

I haven't read 'The Luminaries' yet, that I intend to read at some point, but I didn't expect Catton's next book to be a thriller! The pages did indeed speed along. I thought it was okay -- I never really connected with any of the characters, and I'm not sure I really was expected to. I am also not sure what the message was here, as it really just ended up like a thriller to me. I'm trying to also figure out how this connects more to Macbeth? hmm. Mainly, this reminded me of a handful of T.C. Boyle books... it's probably due to the bumbling characters with mostly good intentions, or so they think, going about things the wrong way. Boyle loves that sort of thing. If you liked 'Birnam Wood', try Boyle! To start along this theme: 'A Friend of the Earth' 'Drop City' or 'East is East'.… (more)

Although this novel was a front-loaded with a bit too much information about the main players, the portraits portrayed interesting characters whose personalities and motivations moved the plot. The premise is a group of ideological “gardening activists,” who cultivate vegetable gardens on “unused” land, sometimes illegally, are given access to a large property by a billionaire who himself doesn’t yet have legal access. The billionaire has his own deceivious reasons for this arrangement, and as the novel unfolds, the James Bond–type gadget villain becomes increasingly threatening in his manipulations. However, the strength of the novel is its exploration of how each character’s self-perceptions and motivations—and their “greed” to attain the object of those motivations—leads to their downfall.… (more)

Definitely one of my faves this year. It started off a bit slow; the first part occurs on the same evening with so many flashback scenes about what happened to each of the 12 characters earlier that day. Part 1 out of 12 is 400 pages long. Luckily the next 11 are much shorter, sometimes only 2-3 pages long.
I loved the mystery, and given that there were so many, I wasn't disappointed. It reminded me of Sherlock Holmes. I wasn't aware that there was a Gold Rush on New Zealand around the same time as the gold rush in the US. I literary know very little about the history of New Zealand.

The best part: there are 12 main characters and each of them has a different zodiac sign and corresponding traits related to that sign. And then there are 6 or 7 characters who pretty much did everyone wrong. Those characters have different planets associated with them. So, you could say that the planets influence the signs. Some of the chapters are titled like that. (Mercury in Pisces, Venus in Leo...)
I just wish that the astrology played a larger role in this book, but I'm satisfied.

I can't wait to see the miniseries. Eva Green is gonna make a great Lydia.… (more)