10 years after the publication of her Booker prize winning novel The Luminaries, Catton has returned to the literary scene with Birnam Wood a story about conservation, morality and truth.

The tone of Birnam Wood is hugely different to that of The Luminaries. For a start (mercifully in my view), it's about half the length. It's pacier too and far more accessible than its much-lauded predecessor.

We follow a group of well-crafted characters each with a stake in a plot of farmland which has been cordoned off following a natural disaster. The eponymous Birnam Wood is a guerrilla gardening collective who plant vegetables on land, often without permission, in a bid to improve the biodiversity of their surroundings and to counteract the environmentally damaging practices of large corporations.

Guided by Catton's assured writing we are introduced to a group of multi-faceted and intriguing characters. Mira is the figurehead of Birnam Wood who despite the anti-capitalist stance of the group, finds herself in partnership with the enigmatic billionaire Robert Lemoine. Lemoine is a villain, father figure, lover, cult-leader all in one and even now a couple of days after finishing the book, I am not sure what to think of him. Tony is a rebel without a cause or perhaps a rebel who struggles to settle on a cause. His motivations were complex and that made him all the more intriguing to read about; I found myself unpicking his choices and actions right until the novel's cinematic ending.

The characters who were perhaps the least convincing were Lord and Lady Darvish, the owners of the land on the Korowai Pass where much of the action of the novel takes place. Their marriage seemed more like a business partnerships than a romantic one. Owen Darvish in particular felt like he existed purely to add texture to the plot and I felt that I didn't get to know enough about him to care about him. Perhaps that was the point, I'm still undecided on that one.

The title is taken from a famous line in Macbeth. Somehow, I managed to get through my entire education in the English school system without studying this particular Shakespearean work. However, the general consensus seems to be that links with the play are tenuous at best and it is rather the image of a wood/natural environment rising up that was being utilised rather than the story itself. In any case I did not find that my lack of familiarity with the play hindered my reading experience so don't let it put you off if, like me, you've never read or seen it.

I very much enjoyed this novel. I liked it much more than The Luminaries. The slow, lilting first half repaid my investment with a heart-racing, propulsive ending that almost had me breathless by the final line. I can't wait to read more from Eleanor Catton and I hope future works from her maintain the same fusion of literary merit and high entertainment value that Birnam Wood achieved.

Incredibly slow-going …. I didn’t manage to finish Catton’s debut but had heard such great things about Birnam Wood I wanted to approach it with fresh eyes, I appreciated Catton’s setting of the location and I loved the premise of this book (eco commune vs billionaire is a story I can definitely get behind) but the characters were so thinly drawn for such a long time I found it a rather plodding read. Thanks NetGalley!

This is an epic read, and one I will be recommending far and wide as one of the best books I've read in a long, long time.

Eleanor Catton is such an accomplished writer, she flawlessly winds together a story full of interesting characters in a beautiful yet flawed landscape as she leads the reader through the fight of climate emergency versus fossil-fuelled capitalism.

I devoured this book. Beautifully paced and written by a truly gifted author. The ending was a genuine shock.

Apocalypse now…

When a landslip causes the collapse of the main road through the Korowai Pass, Owen Darvish’s plans to subdivide his adjacent land and sell it off as building lots crash to a halt. Fortunately, Robert Lemoine, an American billionaire, is looking for an isolated and hard to reach spot at the end of the world to build himself a luxury survivalist bunker in readiness for the actual end of the world. Or so he says. Negotiations for the sale of the land are underway but meantime it is lying empty, unused. Unused land is anathema to the members of Birnam Wood, a left-wing collective who are ideologically against rich people owning land and not putting it to socially good use. They plant crops in any unused spot of land they can find, and finance themselves – just – through the sale of the produce. So when the de facto leader, Mira Bunting, hears about the empty Darvish property, she feels this will provide an opportunity to scale up their operations to a level they’ve only ever dreamed about, maybe even at last achieving their aim of “breaking good” rather than just breaking even. They don’t know about Lemoine and his bunker… or anything else he might be doing on the land around Korowai…

What starts out as a gentle satire of the well-meaning but terribly self-righteous young activists of the left being faced with the ruthlessness of extreme capitalism gradually darkens until it becomes entirely apocalyptic in its message. Not apocalyptic in the sense of the actual world actually ending, but more that our created world – our certainties, our beliefs and even our hopes – are exploded into non-existence, like a supernova leaving only a black hole behind.

Much of it is stuff that has been covered before, of course: the impotence of states and governments in the face of the new billionaire class who often control more money and power than medium size nations, and are not constrained by the need to win votes; the futile smallness of individual actions to “save the planet” when governments of all ideologies think in the short term; the righteous rage of youth and its belief, like the belief of every generation before it, that it is morally, intellectually and ideologically purer than its forebears and has all the answers, if only the stupid, incompetent or corrupt old-timers would leave the stage; and the disillusion and even despair that faces that young generation when they realise that the leaders of their own generation are just as stupid, incompetent and corruptible.

But though the territory may be familiar, Catton’s treatment of it is superbly intelligent and entertaining, and she avoids the temptation to give any kind of glib polemical lectures. She mocks the dreadful earnestness of the young left, the incessant squabbles over tiny inconsequential points of ideology, the impulse to breast-beat luxuriously over inherited and assumed guilt. She shows that those who are “entitled” and “privileged” are far more concerned about the whole question of entitlement and privilege than those who are not – their personal hair shirt that assures them of their own moral superiority. And she shows that, just like the people they despise, they too are capable of greed and pride and ambition, and capable of wilfully blinding themselves to their own lapses from their high moral stance. But there is never any doubt that she is on their side – these are the good guys in the world, maybe just not quite as unfailingly good as they think they are.

She uses a standard thriller format – the psychopath, in this case Lemoine, and the innocents in peril. Her psychopath is chillingly charming, and frighteningly not unlike many of the billionaires we’re all familiar with. He made his money out of developing high-tech drones, theoretically for the peaceful purposes of surveying the environment and keeping track of endangered species. The fact that the drones can also be used for surveillance and as weapons of war is incidental… isn’t it? This makes Lemoine an expert in the fields of surveillance and data, allowing Catton to highlight the almost total lack of privacy into which we have all sleepwalked, and the danger we are all in of being manipulated by those who control the medium and the message. His real plan for the land is to illegally extract rare-earth minerals, and he won’t let anyone get in his way, not governments, not law enforcement and certainly not a bunch of left-wing activists.

But Catton subverts this seemingly familiar format totally. I don’t want to get into spoiler territory obviously, so I’ll simply say it didn’t play out at all as I expected. The moral questions get murkier as it goes along, and there’s a distinct suggestion that anyone could become a Lemoine if the circumstances were right. My immediate reaction to the ending was that it felt all wrong. But once I’d let it settle for a bit, I realised that was the point – Catton strips away one comfort blanket after another, until nothing is left for us to snuggle under and hide. She doesn’t give us answers – she may even be suggesting that there are no answers. And as she refuses to play the thriller game according to the rules, so she lifts this way above that genre – this is serious lit-fic identifying as a thriller. Thought-provoking and wonderfully entertaining – highly recommended!

This was so different to The Luminaires, and I know that's put some people off, but I actually really enjoyed it. It's a pacy eco-thriller which examines society and class in a really clever way, as I would expect from Eleanor Catton. I bought a hardback copy after reading the proof, as I liked it so much!

The first novel since her much-loved The Luminaries, I was of course very keen to pick up Catton’s Birnam Wood. I was surprised to discover it was an eco-thriller, so far removed from the mysterious historical literature of her previous book. Also set in her native New Zealand, though this time in 2017, the novel follows a cast of characters brought together by an unusual set of circumstances; there’s the ‘guerrilla gardening group’ Birnam Wood led by the indomitable Mira Bunting, the American tech billionaire Robert Lemoine, the newly knighted Owen Darvish famed for his pest control business. Very much like Venomous Lumpsucker—also billed as an eco-thriller—this novel is satirical in style. Though less directly funny than the Beauman, this brilliantly takes the modern world to task, and I had to stop highlighting at one point because it just felt so deliciously and ridiculously accurate. I think the opening sections were my favourite, as Catton cinematically moves between her characters, beginning to trace out the web of connections between them. For some this will feel too slow, for others the conversations about capitalism and politics too on-the-nose and didactic. But for me it worked perfectly.

In the second half the thriller part of the plot really takes off, as events begin to spin out of everyone’s control. Whilst I enjoyed this and found it quite ‘fun’ despite the heavy political themes, I missed the exactitude of the first half. Nonetheless this was a read I was always keen to get back to, and it was thoroughly enjoyable, as well as being clever and interesting. The ending is a little controversial, but for those of you who have read it and want to know what I think, I liked it. It felt fitting with the novel’s Shakespearean undertones. Highly recommend.

This book starts off slowly, sucking you into the idiosyncrasies of the relationships between characters: old unresolved tensions, the non-hierarchical structures in the Birnam Wood collective, the lingering mysteries of a new funder.

It then builds into an eco-thriller, with the characters of Birnam Wood being caught up in a tense struggle for justice and equity, against the backdrop of conversations about corruption, money and power.

I found the political discussions within this book fascinating, not necessarily for the content itself, but for Catton's ability to poke holes in several sides of an argument and allow characters to feel rounded, flawed and imperfect. I found myself devouring the final parts of this book, building to a tense finale that was satisfying and bold.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Birnam Wood are an eco-warrior collective based in rural New Zealand. They're led by the irrepressible Mira, a fiery ball of grand ideas to save the planet, but lacking the basic organizational skills to get her mad schemes off the ground. That gap is filled by her friend Shelley, the sensible one, who is becoming tired of her pal's scattergun ways and has plans to leave the group. Complicating things is Tony, a headstrong old flame of Mira's who has returned after several years abroad, with notions of making his name as a hotshot journalist. One day Mira scouts what she believes to be an abandoned farm in Korowai National Park, an ideal location for her modus operandi of growing crops without permission. But she bumps into Robert Lemoine, an American billionaire who has paid a deposit for the property. Lemoine offers to fund Birnam Wood's occupation of the land, with the idea that it will help his bid for New Zealand citizenship. What Mira doesn't know is that Lemoine is using them, as he has his own shady intentions for the farm.

Birnam Wood is Eleanor Catton's long-awaited follow-up to 2013's Booker-winning The Luminaries. She takes her time with the beginning of this story, going deep to introduce the personalities and motivations of the main characters. And this initial lack of action might test the patience of some readers. However, perseverance is rewarded, as a tragic event ups the stakes significantly. The final pages left me holding my breath and the ending has been on my mind ever since. The level of detail and intricate plotting that Catton brings to her work has earned comparisons to Dickens, and I can see why. This is a timely, urgent tale of richly imagined characters, battling all kinds of fascinating moral quandaries.

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 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.

Much as I enjoyed The Luminaries, I experienced the opposite with this book. The opening to this novel is so tedious as the reader has the backstories of the two main female characters explained at considerable length, with no sign of an actual plot. In the end, a DNF as I had no interest in the characters and the ‘thriller’ element is just ridiculous.

A brilliant literary thriller about environment and a groups of characters that mixes and got mixed.
There's plenty of layers and food for thought, there's a cast of intriguing characters, and an excellent storytelling.
It's the first book I read by this author and won't surely be the last.
One of the best of 2023, highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

Thank you to #Netgalley and #Grantapublications

Birnam Wood provides all the 'T's'! The taut, tense, traumatic and turbulent plot centres around realistic, flawed characters. The three main groups of protagonists, Mira and the Birnam Wood folks, billionaire Robert Lemoine and the landowners, Lord and Lady Darvish escalate towards each other as their lives become entwined, knowingly or not.

The Darvishes own land that Lemoine wants to buy. Ask yourself why? Birnam Wood is a non-profit organisation involved in community projects and guerilla gardening. He offers Mira the opportunity to use the land to grow produce, but secretly. Layer upon layer of detail and story yield a monumental denouement.

This has to be one of the best political thrillers around climate change I have ever read. I'm still reeling from the ending a week later.

It is a very welcome return of Eleanor Catton and her magnificent writing skills, not seen since The Luminaries.

Review posted to Amazon.

The download date was unfortunately missed, I would be happy to re-review if it became available again. I have awarded stars for the book cover and description as they both appeal to me. I would be more than happy to re-read and review if a download becomes available. If you would like me to re-review please feel free to contact me at thesecretbookreview@gmail.com or via social media The_secret_bookreview (Instagram) or Secret_bookblog (Twitter). Thank you.

Loved this one! This is a hugely original novel involving a psychopathic Robert Lemoine, a group of Birnam Wood hippies and a rogue anarchist on the run from drones. Set in New Zealand, this was a slow burn to start taken up with worldbuilding and scene setting but quickly escalated into a dark and elaborate story of corporate greed with a dramatic and unexpected conclusion. This was such a timely work of ecofiction and I was totally immersed. 5 ⭐️

Birnam Wood is a beautifully written, compelling eco thriller.
Careful plotting that builds up the pace to an unpredictable ending that didn’t disappoint.
Highly recommended!

the rehearsal by eleanor catton is one of my fave books!! this is obv very different but the writing was just as beautiful and intentional. it's slow and it's a bit hard to get your head around the characters at first but everything rolls together and all of a sudden you're so absorbed

This was my first Catton and I was looking forward to it because of the Booker prize which I did not go for because of it's length. Unfortunately I did not gel with Ms Catton's writing style. She likes lengthy exposition, tell rather than show and I like the short, to the point with the aha moments.

Catton wanted to write a story similar in certain aspects to Macbeth. Well I've read Macbeth about thirteen times in all and always found something new to appreciate. I couldn't do this with this one.

An ARC gently provided by publisher/author via Netgalley

My first First impression of this novel was that it was witty and was going to tell the story of a group of guerrilla gardeners and their relationships however quite quickly the whole tone switches and we are suddenly faced with High tech security and an undercover covert pseudo military mission .I found this quite unexpected and it took my a while for me to switch my expectations the novel suddenly becomes a fast paced thriller
It read like it would make a great Tv series but somehow it missed something for me uk novel form .The covert mining sub story just didn’t didn’t seem realistic to me add to this a
Thoroughly unsatisfying sudden end which seems to stop suddenly leaving me feeling short changed
I read an early copy on NetGalley uk the book is published in the uk. On 2nd March 2023 by Granta Publications.
This review will appear ok Goodreads NetGalley and my book blog bionicsarahsbooks.Wordpress.Com

Eleanor Catton has been one of my favourite authors since her debut The Rehearsal - her sense of voice in her writing is, in my opinion, exceptional, and the complexity and humanity of her characters was astounding. Similarly, her Booker Prize winning The Luminaries stunned me with its deft combination of character and structure and allusion, much of which went over my head.

Allusiveness remains a key feature of this novel: entitled Birnam Wood, you are encouraged to look for those Shakespearean comparisons between Macbeth and this novel. Is Robert Lemoine a modern day Macbeth? Or does he represent the witches or Banquo? Are we meant to see Lady Macbeth in Mira? Is Sir Owen Darvish Duncan, Malcolm or Banquo? Fortunately, this novel is by no means anything as mawkish or clumsy as a modern day retelling of the Shakespeare and is robustly its own creation so those allusions feel suggestive and nebulous and evocatively indistinct which I loved.

The novel is very much a modern day novel centred around climate change, environmentalism and our exploitation of the modern world and the conflict between capitalism and liberal socialism. Our heroes are the underfunded gardening collective after whom the novel takes its name, a loose group of men and women who take over unused parcels of land and farm them, usually without the owner's consent or knowledge. I loved this idea: a wonderful form of guerilla agriculture! When a landslide exposes and isolates Sir Owen Darvish's estate, the collective move in and are met with and offered money by Robert Lemoine, an incredibly manipulative and sinister American billionaire.

Lemoine's presence on the land is no more legal, perhaps, than Birnam Wood's and his motives are distinctly sinister - and I did wonder whether Catton could have done something a little more ambitious or nuanced with him. American? Must be evil. American billionaire? A definite seat in hell awaits him. It felt a little... familiar and obvious perhaps. At the same time, though, Catton seemed to have a great deal of fun writing him and he was one of the more enjoyable points of view that we got treated to: unlike Mira or Shelley, he was not mired in worries for other people or that irritating sense of morality that the rest of us labour under!

In fact, the morality and the politics felt rather too heavy in the opening chapters - perhaps the first half of the novel. Catton leans heavily into exposition as she introduces new characters and we are regaled with pages of back story and history before those characters do anything and I can see many readers finding that rather dense and intimidating, and being put off as a result. Similarly, the meeting held by Birnam Wood in order to decide whether to accept Lemoine's offer of money or not - whether to sell out their values or not - was heavy on politics. Tony, a founding member of the group who had left some years ago and just returned, expounded at length on the perils of capitalism and consumerism and lamented that there is "something so joyless about the left these days... so forbidding and self-denying. And policing" and that

"Polyamory is to fucking capitalistic... The idea that this partner gives you a little bit of this, and this partner gives you a little bit of that, and you don't want to risk missing out to you buy both - it's a hedge!... Polyamory doesn't leading to fucking socialism, it leads to hyper-egoistic, Mormon, hyper-capitalistic -"

Whilst I am by nature and inclination - if not by upbringing - proudly socialist, I found Tony to be both a deeply unconvincing character here and elsewhere in the novel, and I found his diatribes to be lengthy and tedious and unnecessary.

What I did find touching was the relationship between Mira and Shelley, friends who share ideals but are perhaps on different paths. Shelley, seeking to forge a life outside Birnam Wood and trying to break from the group without betraying Mira; Mira, sensitive enough to Shelley's moods to know something is wrong but not clear on what to do about it. Mira, who generates lots of the ideas that drive Birnam Wood, and Shelley who does most of the practical running of Birnam Wood.

The relationship between Birnam Wood and Lemoine was never going to be an entirely comfortable one - and its being inspired or informed by a Shakespearean tragedy should have prepared me for the ending - but the final chapters of the novel felt like a sudden and somewhat unsettling shift in tone for me.

Overall, the novel was fascinating but its characters and writing did not grip in the same way that Catton's earlier novels did. I am still slightly surprised, however, that it did not find its way onto the Women's Prize longlist this year. I do think it warranted a place there.