Birnam Wood: A Novel

by Eleanor Catton

Hardcover, 2023

Call number

FIC CAT

Publication

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2023), 432 pages

Description

Five years ago, Mira Bunting founded a guerrilla gardening group: Birnam Wood. An undeclared, unregulated, sometimes criminal, sometimes philanthropic gathering of friends, this activist collective plants crops wherever no one will notice, on the sides of roads, in forgotten parks and neglected backyards. For years, the group has struggled to break even. Then Mira stumbles on an answer, a way to finally set the group up for the long term: a landslide has closed the Korowai Pass, cutting off the town of Thorndike. Natural disaster has created an opportunity, a sizable farm seemingly abandoned. But Mira is not the only one interested in Thorndike. Robert Lemoine, the enigmatic American billionaire, has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker, or so he tells Mira when he catches her on the property. Intrigued by Mira, Birnam Wood, and their entrepreneurial spirit, he suggests they work this land. But can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other?… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member KingRat
Supposedly this is a literary thriller, but there's a lot wrong and dumb about this.


1. The author really really likes run-on sentences.

2. This is not how hacking works.

3. The villain is the worst mustache-twirler.

4. His plot isn't how ultra rich people plot, with intricate conspiracies that depend
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on hiding all the facts. Rather, they do it in the open, with plausible deniability.

5. Twirler has to keep his purchase of a farm secret, when he could just buy it.

6. He randomly decides to possess a young naive trespassing gardener and fund her gardening collective in some sort of secret challenge grant makes no sense.

7. He supplies LSD to the collective for no apparent reason.

8. He does a bunch of these near the site of his nefarious plot for no good reason, endangering his plan.



The kids' motivations feel somewhat authentic, but everything else about this book is irritating.
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LibraryThing member japaul22
I snapped up Catton's new novel as soon is it was released and I have no idea what to think about it. I think I hated it.

[Birnam Wood] is about a group of idealistic 20-somethings in New Zealand who start a "guerilla gardening co-op" called Birnam Wood. This was my first problem. Gardening?
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Really? They go around finding unused land and choose to grow crops there instead of reintroducing native plants? Seems significantly behind the times in terms of a "cause". Anyway, this group is led by Mira and Shelley, who are having friend problems. Shelley is thinking about moving on. And then Tony, an early member of the group, reappears and shakes things up. He goes on long philosophical-political rants and no one is authentic enough for him.

In the meantime, Mira finds a tract of land near the national forest of Korowai on the private property of the Darvishes. It seems that they are in the midst of a sale to billionaire Robert Lemoine and she seizes the opportunity of the empty land to start a garden. But getting herself and Birnam Wood mixed up with these people will prove to be a very bad idea.

About two-thirds through the book it turns into a violent thriller. Felt like one of those ultra-male movies that I hate with lots of violence and evil people.

The whole thing was just so strange. Besides the crazy plot, Catton does a deep dive into the inner motivations of all of her characters - annoyingly telling the reader all about what makes them tick instead of showing it through her writing.

And yet . . . this is a very confident book. Catton is all in and doesn't shirk from the story she's decided to tell. And I couldn't put it down - even with a very busy work schedule, I read this in a couple days. So please, I'm hoping some fellow LT-ers will read this and tell me what to think!
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LibraryThing member bblum
Strong character development, good original story and I don’t want to give up the plot. Young climate activists interact with a billionaire aka Elon Musk. Secrecy, illegal mining and a natural park. Highly recommended for both characters and unexpected plot.
LibraryThing member kayanelson
I had never gotten around to reading The Luminaries for which Eleanor Catton won the Booker Prize and now I’m not going to. Birnam Wood was just okay for me. It was a weird set of characters that were put together in unusual circumstances. I never really wanted to know what was going to happen
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next as the “plot” was rather uninteresting to me. The ending left me hanging. I was surprised but didn’t care.
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LibraryThing member elkiedee
A series of minor earthquakes triggers a landslide at the Korowai Pass, near Thorndike, a small town on New Zealand's South Island.

The story then introduces a number of characters and the conflicts between them.

This includes members of the Birnam Wood "collective", practising eco activism through
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guerrilla gardening, including Mira, a young woman who has come to dominate the group, and her partner Shelley, who has plans to leave Birnam Wood and Mira after a few years for something else. Then a former member of the group, Tony turns up - why is he back after years away? Mira is researching a Thorndike businessman, owner of a large pest control company with lots of government and private contracts., and local landowner, recently knighted for "services to conservation". Then there's a a ruthless American billionaire.

Few of the characters seem very likeable and there is quite a lot of detail here, but Eleanor Catton builds up an intriguing scenario for this literary thriller, with a real sense of impending danger, which makes it into a thought provoking page turner. There are some quite wordy sentences and paragraphs, but it still moves at a pace.

I received an advance copy of this through Netgalley, though I also borrowed a library hardback.
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LibraryThing member whitsunweddings
I just want to add something to the discourse that I haven't seen anyone else mention - the politics of Birnam Wood's governance structure is excruciatingly accurate in its depiction of the New Zealand left-wing political scene. The veggie curries, the people, the "Are we Māori enough to use a
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Māori name?" conversation (which I loved, because wow that's not a kōrero New Zealand is not ready to have), it's almost too real.

It's a great depiction of this specific moment in time, and I'm really curious to know if other Kiwis (let's face it, I mean the Wellingtonians who got this out of the library on their way to Harbourside market) feel the same.
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LibraryThing member JBD1
A fast-moving eco-thriller with some good buildup, but ultimately it proved rather unsatisfying.
LibraryThing member Jthierer
This book suffered from pretty serious pacing problems. The book starts very, very slowly with a focus on the backstories and petty rivalries of the Birnam Wood gardening collective before eventually setting the main plot in motion. However, even when that gets going, there are extended diversions
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into the lives and thoughts of other characters. I would honestly not have minded this, since Catton did a good job of bringing these people to live, if the ending had not felt horribly horribly rushed. It genuinely felt like Catton wrote herself into a situation she didn't know how to get her characters out of plausibly. Very disappointing and knocked at least a star off for me.
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LibraryThing member gypsysmom
This book made it onto the Giller Prize shortlist. I have a bit of a problem with that. Not because it's not a good book but because the author, although born in Canada, has not spent very much time living here. She was raised in New Zealand which is where this book is set. There is not a smidgeon
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of Canadiana in it. It's hard enough to make a living as an author in Canada; these prizes are a godsend for struggling writers. The final outcome saw the Giller Prize going to another ex-pat, Sarah Bernstein, but at least she grew up in Canada. Okay, rant over.

I'm sure we all remember studying Shakespeare's Macbeth and most of us probably identified the title of this book from that play. In Macbeth the title character is told that he will only be defeated when Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane. Since trees can't move Macbeth figures he is safe. But, indeed, Birnam Wood does come to Dunsinane because the advancing soldiers cut off branches to hide their approach to the castle and it looks like Birnam Wood is moving. So, what does that have to do with a book about eco-gardeners in New Zealand in 2017? The group's founder, Mira, came up with the name to identify the group with a concept of plants taking over where they haven't been found before. The group plants seeds and seedlings in disused public places and then sells or otherwise distributes the produce. Mira has the grand view for the group that it will become so established it will make enough money to support her and all the other gardeners. Meanwhile, her roommate and second in command, Shelley, is responsible for most of the grunt work and she's tired of that. She wants to leave but doesn't quite know how to tell Mira. Then in walks Tony, an original member of the group who has been away for a number of years. He had and still has a thing for Mira. Shelley figures if she can just get him to go to bed with her, Mira will be so upset she will kick Shelley out. There's just one flaw, Tony isn't interested in Shelley.Meanwhile, Mira is on track to take the group up to the next level. She hears of an abandoned farmstead near a landslide owned by the Darvishes. She goes there to check it out and finds that the property is about to be sold to an American billionaire. Robert Lemoine ostensibly wants to buy property to build a shelter in the event of a global holocaust. In fact, this is a cover story for his mining of an adjacent park for rare minerals he needs for his drone business. It's not quite clear why Lemoine wants Birnam Wood to be on the property but he offers to bankroll them as a pilot project. Tony is against doing business with Lemoine but the rest of Birnam Wood go along with it. Tony decides to investigate (he's a free-lance journalist) and runs across the illegal mining operation. Down at the farm things go pretty well until Lemoine hands out LSD and then a fatal accident occurs. Lemoine is very smart and figures he can cover up what happened. He also figures he can eliminate the threat that Tony poses. What do you think will happen? Let me tell you, it's nothing good but I was surprised by how bad it actually turned out.

In addition to my dislike of this book being nominated for the Giller Prize, I also found a lot of the explanations of the leftist politics of the Birnam Wood crew juxtaposed with the aggressive capitalism of Lemoine to be just too much verbiage. Really, how often do we have to listen to the polemics of either side to get the concept that they are polar opposites. On the plus side, if you read this book like a modern-day thriller you'll probably enjoy it.
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LibraryThing member technodiabla
I listed to this on Audible. Birnam Wood is a thriller about a billionaire who has various get richer plots that involve exploiting an activist gardening collective in New Zealand and a recently knighted business man and his angelic wife. But there's a journalist, and some sex, and some
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drugs.....This novel is written very very modern. There's pervasive use of technology and lots of modern political diatribes and sentiments. Yet no one ever seems to have a phone charger? I thought the plot was a little slow to get started but I was pretty intrigued once it picked up steam. Then the ending was a complete and utter let down. I never really felt anything for any of the characters. There wasn't really anyone to root for. The villain was a proper villain but everyone else was too deeply flawed to be a hero. I did like the themes of the novel: the moral ambiguity of both the best-intended acts and those driven by pure greed. I liked how the novel turned the modern black and white and good and evil narratives of today on their heads and called it all into question. I think the book is far from perfect but worthwhile in some ways.
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LibraryThing member macha
a thriller set in New Zealand built around a tech billionaire, his situational ethics, and his rapacious influence on his surroundings. so, basically, a poster child for late-stage capitalism sets out to manipulate a small collective of idealistic twenty-somethings with a new paradigm for market
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gardening. which doesn't sound like a fair fight between equals. and it's not. more like predator, with prey. murder ensues, and the environment is at major risk. very interesting setup, good characters, and a pretty good look on a one-to-one level at the idealogical clash between a benevolent view of the world (in several iterations) and a worldview based purely on money and power.
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LibraryThing member mojomomma
A group of idealistic young NZ gardeners goes to a deserted farm to plant their guerilla crops at the invitation of a rich American who tells them he is purchasing the farm as a place to live out the Apocolypse, if and when it happens. In reality, he is trying to mask that he is mining the nearby
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national park for rare earth minerals, that he can sell for a fortune. When the farm's owner comes by to check on things, he is mistakenly killed. The billionaire's attempts to cover up the death and his clandestine mining operation cause him to act more and more rashly.
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LibraryThing member Perednia
It takes some time to get rolling, but when the narrative meshes with the ideas behind the novel, this is an audacious story. The larger-than-life characters are not playing as they all try to have their way about the environment, attacking or taking advantage of capitalism, and money.
LibraryThing member lisapeet
I liked 99.9% of Eleanor Catton's [Birnam Wood], a tale of 20-something New Zealand idealists in a guerrilla gardening collective vs. (or with—allegiances shifted often) an American uber-capitalist. Slightly baggy but engaging, and I enjoyed all the characters, even though on later reflection
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none of them were actually very likable (but I'm a fan of those). I was really put off by the ending, but I think that one's on me... Catton definitely stuck her landing. I'll be interested to hear what other readers think once the book's out.
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LibraryThing member mmparker
Wow. Richly portrays its characters thoughts and motivations, and seems to capture the feeling of the time in a way I haven't encountered elsewhere. What an ending.
LibraryThing member kcshankd
Wow. Didn't quite land the plane - as I neared the end I wondered how this would all wrap up. It does not end in a neat Elmore Leonard-like plot twist, but is a satisfying and thrilling read regardless.
LibraryThing member Castlelass
Environmental fiction based around an extreme gardening organization, Birnam Wood, a group that grows food on unused land, which occasionally involves trespassing. Mira Bunting is Birnam Wood’s founder. When Mira meets a billionaire who says he is purchasing a tract of land near a recent
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landslide, it leads to a deal that appears to be mutually beneficial, though at least one member feels it is against their principles. Other major players include Tony, an aspiring journalist who has not been active in Birnam Wood recently, Shelley, the person who holds Birnam Wood together with her accounting and planning skills, and Owen and Jill Darvish, owners of the land being sold to the billionaire.

This book has everything – fabulous believable characters, socially relevant subject matter, a creative and engrossing storyline, and top-rate writing. The environmental theme is particularly well done. The billionaire wants to build a doomsday bunker. He employs the latest technology, including drone surveillance. I would call it a “literary thriller” in that it starts with a detailed introduction of characters, complete with a deep dive into their interior thoughts, and slowly builds to include more action and faster pacing, ultimately reaching a whirlwind climax.

I enjoyed this book almost all the way through; however, much of my appreciation for a book relies on the ending. While I understand the point, I did not care for it. I would love to discuss it with others. I anticipate there will be a wide variety of reactions.

4.5
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LibraryThing member mbmackay
This is good book - limpid-clear writing, strong characterisation, and an interesting plot. But I got this book because I enjoyed The Luminaries, and this book is quite different from that brick of a book.
Of course, it's not the author's fault if my expectations are not met - but I was looking for
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something lyrical, with a touch almost of fantasy, and I got an action thriller.
I'll be back for Ms Catton's next book, More ready than this time for changes of style or genre.
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LibraryThing member adzebill
Surprisingly, a thriller. Deception, self-deception, psychopathy, timidity, cupidity, mistakes, fakes, and guerrila gardening. Pacy, a twisty plot, and more character development and complex motivation than you usually get in a thriller. Its setting is that pivotal post-Trump, pre-Jacinda moment
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when we naively imagined all was lost. Catton's science is a little shaky; rare-earth element mining apparently involves digging up a lot of…earth. And trucking it away, and riches follow. And a major plot event is murder by poisoning with 1080 rabbit bait. 1080 rabbit bait is brightly-coloured pellets rather than a subtle paste or powder, the human lethal dose is a LOT of pellets, and it takes hours for a mammal to die once poisoned—all bad news for Catton's denouement.
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LibraryThing member sblock
So good but very dark.
LibraryThing member maryreinert
Set in New Zealand, Birnam Wood is a guerrilla green gardening group that plants on public and otherwise illegal lands. Mira is their founder with her best friend, Shelly. They have decided to plant on a huge acreage of ground that has been isolated due to a landslide. At the same time, the owners
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of this land, Sir Owen Darvish is in the process of selling the land to Robert Lemoine, a billionaire who is actually extracting valuable minerals from the public forest next to the land. Because it is difficult to get the minerals from the site, he is supposing to put a survivalist bunker on the Darvish land which will require huge machinery that will actually be transporting the minerals.

Lemoine who is a technology guru discovers Mira on the land and eventually uses the Birnum Wood project as a front for his operations. Seeming to have "sold out" to the billionaire, one of the Birnam Wood members, Tony, who is a "freelance photographer" is determined to find out what is actually happening on the land.

The book takes the form of a thriller with Lemoine using all sorts of high tech devices to not only cover his tracts but later to cover the accidental death of Sir Owen.

The character of Lemoine seems at bit of a stretch and certainly the relationship between him and Mira; however, the book is certainly readable and I was drawn into the story. The writing reminds me somewhat of Barbara Kingsolver.
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LibraryThing member nivramkoorb
I have eagerly waited almost 10 years for this new novel by Catton. I loved her Booker Prize winning novel "The Luminaries" and this book is a worthy successor. The book takes place near Christchurch, New Zealand at the korowai National park. Birnam Wood is a collective that grows food on used
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public and private lands. They employ at times somewhat illegal tactics in order to achieve their goals. Mira, the founder, and Shelley the worker bee are the leaders. Tony, an early member returns after being gone for years. This is the setting for the novel. What propels it forward is Robert the American billionaire who is purchasing land near Korowai from Sir Own Darvish. It appears he wants to build a bunker to be prepared for the impact of climate change etc. Except this is not his real agenda. Once Robert and Mira connect, the book moves forward at a breakneck pace where you. have eco-idealists and their agenda clashing with bad guy brilliant billionaire. Catton does a great job of getting into the heads of the lead characters. Once that is set up the book is a great thriller with a page turning pace. The book also does a great job on incorporating technology into the plot. The ending is a little abrupt but overall this is a perfect book for those who have not read Catton. Her other 2 books are excellent but "The Luminaries" which won the Booker Prize when Catton was 28 years old(the youngest Booker Prize Winner) is over 800 pages. Read this first and then I strongly recommend "The Luminaries" if you can handle 800 pages.
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LibraryThing member Gwendydd
A group of young people run a startup that plants gardens in unused public spaces and distributes the produce to the food-insecure in New Zealand. The leader of the group is investigating planting a garden on a large stretch of private land near a public park, when she meets a billionaire who is
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considering buying the land. He offers to invest in the startup, which creates controversy among the startup members who are torn between taking his money and standing up for their principles. Things get complicated because the billionaire wants to use them as a distraction from illegal mining he is doing on the adjacent public lands.

This takes a long time to turn into a thriller... the first half is more of a soap opera about the relationships between the various characters. None of the characters is likeable, or even very sympathetic. The book gets more engaging once the action picks up in the second half, but then the ending is very sudden and felt like a cop-out.
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LibraryThing member fromthecomfychair
Hey, thanks to the reviewer who put the spoiler out there, and thanks to LibraryThing for not catching it. Please remove BookyMaven's review so the book won't be spoiled for anyone else.
LibraryThing member RidgewayGirl
Birnam Wood is a collective, one of those groups where all decisions are voted on and the chair of meetings rotates around the membership, at least half of whom are vegan. But really Mira is the driving force. This guerrilla gardening collective is her idea and it's her energy that drives in on.
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Shelley is the one who does all the administrative tasks and makes Mira's ideas work. But it's never been self-sustaining and now Shelley wants to leave. She hasn't told Mira yet, but Mira can see the cracks as well as anyone. And then Mira finds a perfect place to do some larger scale gardening and there's even a billionaire there who is talking about funding them in a way that could really get the project from a volunteer project to a viable concern. Of course, this means trusting the kind of person Mira had always considered the enemy and hiding a few details from the rest of [Birnam Wood], but this is far too good an opportunity to turn down, isn't it?

Eleanor Catton's book is one that begins as a character study of a diverse array of stock characters, to a sort of eco-thriller in its final third. Does it work as a novel? Yes and also I expected more from Catton, a superlatively gifted writer who gave us both the unsettling The Rehersal and the expansive and intricate The Luminaries. I do like what Catton attempted here, with all the many characters going in their many directions and the way she is poking gentle fun at the dynamics of groups and left-leaning individuals, and less gentle fun at the wealthy. Her plot was improbable, but she wrote it so well that I was able to go with it. It was ham-fisted at times, but within acceptable limits. Which is to say, had the author been anyone else, I would have had a more favorable opinion of it, but is it fair to hold Catton to a higher standard when even a great author is going to have less-than-great books? After all, I honestly enjoyed this novel.
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Awards

Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2024)
Kirkus Prize (Finalist — Fiction — 2023)
Audie Award (Finalist — Fiction — 2024)
Scotiabank Giller Prize (Shortlist — 2023)
Orwell Prize (Shortlist — 2023)
BookTube Prize (Octofinalist — Fiction — 2024)
Ockham New Zealand Book Award (Longlist — Fiction — 2024)
Libby Book Award (Finalist — Adult Fiction — 2023)
Nero Book Award (Shortlist — Fiction — 2023)

Pages

432

ISBN

0374110336 / 9780374110338
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