If critics don’t understand it, why did Catton’s book win a major prize?

This fall, Eleanor Catton released a big beast of a novel, The Luminaries, and picked up the highest honor in literature, the Man Booker Prize  (more important than the Pulitzer or the Nobel, in my humble opinion). At the time of the prize announcement, I was spending a lot of time in hospital waiting rooms … Continue reading If critics don’t understand it, why did Catton’s book win a major prize?