Call number
Collections
Genres
Publication
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
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
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.
[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?
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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
Of course, it's not the author's fault if my expectations are not met - but I was looking for
I'll be back for Ms Catton's next book, More ready than this time for changes of style or genre.
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.
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.
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.