I am mostly proud of myself that a managed the full 830pages (the final 500 over the coarse of 3 days no less!) in time for bookclub, though I fear no other member will have finished it.

it opened as a hint to a ghost story and quickly turned into a game of 'Clue' set in New Zealand during the goldrush. each chapter revealed a meandering and non-chronological telling of one man's perception of a trio of events (a whore's apparent attempt at suicide, a hermit's death, and the disappearance of a young, rich man) and it was with great dismay I found that the final chapter of this first part was the interloper's summation of all the men's stories: in other words, the first 340 pages were redundant in the space of the next 20.

all the chapters were sub-headed in an astrological way (which meant nothing to me) and alluded to the supernatural aspects of the story that were never really explained or tidied up. at the heart of the tale it would seem that the whore and rich man are halves of a whole: he takes a drug to become unconscious and she collapses, she gives up opium easily when he assumes a dependency, she shoots herself and he receives the bullet...) all of it nonsense, and the 12 players would be privy to these irrational details, so why would they go along with it? just to get the obviously criminal man? to be assured suspicions weren't cast upon them?