The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

The first line of The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton is

The twelve men congregated in the smoking room of the Crown Hotel gave the impression of a party accidentally met.

I look forward to digging in to this 800+ page book. I first read about it when Emily Temple wrote an essay/listicle about long books. There, she had this to say:

Even if you don’t know anything about astrology, if you have the time, it’s worth cracking into Catton’s Booker Prize-winning second novel, set in the New Zealand prospecting town of Hokitika, and featuring a whole host of absorbing, strange, and semi-moral characters, who are trying to figure out what really happened one fateful night (it involves murder, of course, and gold, and sex). For those seeking full absorption—and transportation.