A great novel, for the right reader - The Luminaries

Finally, I have to say that Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries is a great novel - for the right reader. I am not that reader, so I won't be finishing this long book, but it does have many strengths. For someone who's read every 19th-century English-language novel and still hungers for more - here you go. As noted in several previous posts, it's a re-creation of the Victorian style, a tribute to the era, a piece of contemporary historical fiction, and a parody - all at once. I am truly impressed by her capacity to introduce a character with a lot of depth - characters, in other words, and not just characteristics - as is the case in most contemporary fiction. Also truly impressed at her capacity to create establish a scene and create a community, in this case a New Zealand gold-rush town - the palpable sense of the rain, of the dangerous coast, the isolation, the machismo, the desperate urge for quick wealth, the latent racial prejudices and anxieties - all there. For me, however, 250 or so pages in, we just keep meandering around the elements of the extremely, almost comically, complex plot that Catton sets forth - a mysterious death of a hermit who inexplicably left behind a treasure in gold, the disappearance of one of the wealthiest prospectors in the area, the discovery of the town "whore" nearly dead from an opium OD and w/ gold sewn into the corset she's wearing, and many, many other rivulets of plot - so complex that I can barely follow it and don't especially care. That's the case in many mystery novels as well but most of the successful ones are carried by a strong protagonist (Marlowe, Holmes, et al) - in The Luminaries there are many secondary characters but no central character to guide us through this maze of a plot It's almost as if every chapter introduces a new character. So I'm moving on but not without a little bit of regret and noting that some will find a great deal more in this book - if they're willing to devote the time and attention it takes to meet Catton on her own terms. There are other highly demanding books that I've found worth the effort - Search for Lost Time, Ulysses - and other about which I've said, yes, this is a probably a great book but I can't go there (Gravity's Rainbow, e.g.). The Luminaries falls somewhat short of great - but it's just asking a little more of me than I can give.