This was a slow burner I’m afraid. I’m glad I continued with it, because the final page of Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 in its entirety were gripping. The depth of character description and internal thoughts were very well-written but slowed down the pace a lot. I thought the structure of the book did enable plot twists and red herrings and it was great to hear the perspectives of all main characters but still leaving clues and not revealing everything. I wasn’t expecting the ending but not sure if I liked Tony’s fate…

Thanks to NetGalley for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I tried really hard to get into this book but could not engage. It may be that my mind wasn't focused as I think there are many readers who will love it

Wow this book! It starts off quite slow and took me a while to get into but it was definitely worth it.

It is beautifully written although the long sentences and paragraphs were at first difficult to engage with I ended up loving the writing style and could not put it down.

It is very much character driven in the first part of the book as we learn about each of our main characters and their motivations and connections to the storyline. The characters are compelling and somewhat morally grey, I found myself switching between liking and disliking each of them at various points. I felt the question of ethical behaviour was raised really well in the various characters and their actions and justifications.

The tension slowly builds and the plot line comes together nicely but it really picks up pace in the third part of the book. There are so many twists and turns and I was literally sitting on the edge of my seat for the final few pages.

This is a thrilling eco political book which raises so many relevant questions for our current world. It won’t be everyone’s favourite and I’ve seen lots of mixed reviews but I loved this book.

Read this book if you’d enjoy a slow paced, character driven, literary fiction that progresses to a dramatic, thrilling conclusion that will leave you thinking about that ending for weeks afterwards!

Description:
A mildly illegal eco group have a surprise encounter with a billionaire who likes the cut of their jib…

Liked:
Every character is convincing, and none of them are wholly sympathetic. I really enjoyed how much thought had gone into everyone's pyschology. Despite how much time it invests in folks' interior lives, it still manages to feel fairly pacey, and the plot is suspenseful and fraught.

Disliked:
The ending felt rushed. It's a shame that the conclusion was reached so suddenly, as I could really have gone for more suspense!

Would definitely recommend - lots of (uncomfortable) fun!

Wonderful novel. Totally gripping, despite its increasingly outlandish plot. Very enjoyable and great characters.

Birnam Wood is sterling. A darkly comedic, uneasy eco political thriller with Catton's usual world weaving and characters so fully drawn and realised you can't help but read as fast as humanly possible as they collide and entangle.

Birnam Wood reminds me of nothing so much as Adaptation, the early 2000s Charlie Kaufman film that started with navel-gazing about writer’s block and took a hard left into Meryl Streep snorting orchids and Chris Cooper being eaten by an alligator. Birnam’s metamorphosis is more gradual, and its final. eco-thriller form less obviously self-parodical, but it’s all about the same well-executed pivot.

Spinning is always a good trick, mind you, and it made Adaptation memorable twenty years later, but unfortunately I can’t quite see what Catton actually gains from the bait-and-switch here, or at least from committing to it so wholly. At first, tossing a few potboiler elements adds a transgressive punch to the plotting, which in its first section circles around a series of sharply observed, but very quotidian intra-left political and personal squabbles. So when a billionaire anti-hero / villain suddenly and effortlessly cracks another character’s phone for purposes unknown, it’s an appealing touch of darkness, a provocative flirtation of just the sort his hacking victim (ironically) lives for. But after that initial shock Catton goes on to reproduce thriller conventions maybe a little too well, with unlikely coincidences and cliff-edge set pieces delivering momentum without much concern for plausibility. I suspect we’re meant to experience the book’s taut second half as a queasy, brakes-off lurch into the abyss like Macbeth’s, a black premonition of how our own divisions will inevitably deliver ecological doom. But it’s not quite tight — or unhinged — enough to feel inevitable or tragic, just a series of partially-rationalised, somewhat implausible bad decisions in the service of arriving at a pre-agreed destination. And hey, that’s more than good enough for the bestsellers, most of which would kill for Catton’s drive-by poeticism, but what was all that earlier Austenesque observational psychology and thematic ambiguity about then?

Catton’s treatment of our billionaire, Robert Lemoine, underscores the costs of going full thriller quite well. Where almost all of our other leads are surrounded by a wry catalogue of their very human self-deceptions, hypocrisies, failings and selfish hopes, Lemoine is an ambulatory void of plans and actions and drive. He isn’t wholly depsychologized, we get some explanation for why he’s this way, and Catton makes his capacity for evil tremendously clear, but the net effect is to give him a kind of Miltonic grandeur. His plans may be moustache-twirlingly dastardly*, but because he isn’t self-sabotaging or disguising lust and pride with high principle he’s beyond easy reproach, a force of nature that easily blows over the scrubs of Birnam Wood. Perhaps that’s the intended effect — the book’s tone verges on nihilism in places — or maybe it’s needed to drive all the action, but it calls attention to how uneasily Birnam’s two halves fit together.

* and frankly impossible — the resources Lemoine's interested in actually aren’t all *that* valuable, so getting to $1T would require him to surreptitiously move at least one million tons of ore, about the same amount of material as all the concrete in the Burj Khalifa, and apparently he’s going to do it with a handful of thirty ton lorries in an evening in a national park. It’s like making off with all the gold of Fort Knox in a Cessna, it just doesn't work.

Great page-turning thriller that was almost impossible to put down. Skilfully written and a very satisfying read.

This is certainly one of the most unpredictable things I've ever read.

A book that is pushed forward with such brilliance by it's incredibly written characters, Birnam Wood is a psychological thriller that continues throughout to twist and turn until the last page where you are left with a need with what happens after, I need to know these people so much better, I want to live with them.

Mira is a great character, from the first page I could relate to her quirks and I think the characters as they are developed are so well formed and feel so human with roles in this book that make you think 'oh, I know someone like this' bringing these pages alive in a new way that makes for such incredible reading of this book.

Brilliantly written and a book that leaves you feeling out of breath with the pace, I really enjoyed Birnam Wood and hope we don't have to wait so long for another book from this incredible author.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy to review!

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

I was originally attracted to this book by its title, Birnam Wood, but it’s association with Macbeth is at most very tenuous.

The premise is what happens when a group of anarchist organic food growers become bewitched by a mysterious benefactor. Is it all too good to be true? Does power win over moral virtue? Does appetite for the world’s resources prevail over protection of the environment?

As a global population, we are going through this type of soul searching. Such questions are reaching into our arts and culture; books,plays and films, even our every day lives.

This is a book which challenges the reader to think about such issues, whilst at the same time producing a thrilling story. I did find it a difficult read at times, with very long sentences and fluctuations in the pace of the narrative. It may have benefitted from being more concise, but nevertheless, the dedication of the author is on the page.

Catton is best known as youngest recipient of the Booker Prize for the seminal book “The Luminaries" – a historical fiction adventure set during New Zealand’s gold rush. Birnam Wood is a completely different but equally brilliant book taking the form of a literary eco-thriller set in 2017 New Zealand pitting a guerrilla gardening collective against an enigmatic tech billionaire.
Birnam Wood (named after the forest in MacBeth) are a non-profit group planting crops in unused urban spaces, sometimes with permission and sometimes with trespassing going on. Their leader Mira hears of a landslide in the imaginary Korowai National Park on the South Island and sees the potential of expanding their output so sets off to explore. While scouting the area, she encounters the charismatic tech billionaire, Robert Lemoine, who has made his billions in drone technology and is building a luxury bunker in a remote New Zealand national park, where he can ride out the apocalypse. Lemoine, claims to be keen to get involved with more ecological businesses and build his green credentials and wants to invest in developing Birnam Wood into a profitable business.

The collective then need to decide whether they will stick to their leftish ideals or get involved with a capitalist leader with questionable ethical credentials?
The first chapter of the book really focuses on this world building and then in second half the book really takes off in many dark directions leading to an edge of the seat second half with so many twists and turns and the third chapter was completely unputdownable.
I absolutely loved this book – a worthy follow-up to The Luminaries.
Highly recommend and my only question at the end of the book was who was the real MacBeth character?

The Luminaries was a wonderful book - almost a ‘how do you follow that?’ for the author, but Eleanor Catton has done it again with this new novel. Birnam Wood is a guerrilla gardening collective and ecological organisation in New Zealand, which aims to save the planet one small garden at a time. When they come across a billionaire who offers them untold riches and space to grow on his secluded property, they couldn’t ask for much more than that. Needless to say, the billionaire’s motives and activities are not as they first seem and things start to get very nasty indeed. The novel is an excellent exploration of the gulf between ecological ideals and the capitalist aims of the rich and powerful, and it’s all rolled up in a riveting story - just a little stretching of credibility was needed at times, but there are no doubt such evil billionaires and gullible idealists in the world.

Birnam wood is an anarchist gardening collective in New Zealand, set up by founder Mira bunting, who plant crops in areas where no one will notice. They are struggling to make an impact until Mira comes up with a plan; a landslide has closed the Korowai pass, near the town of Thorndike. It’s the perfect cover to use the land with no one noticing; except, they’re not the only ones with ideas on how to use it.

Although this is a literary novel, it’s also a thriller (is eco-thriller a genre?). One of the authors I thought of when reading this was Donna Tartt, who I think also writes books of a similar ilk. Anyone who knows me and my feelings on Tartt will know I can’t give much higher praise than that. It's a fine line to tread but I think Elizabeth Catton manages to achieve it, writing a novel of big ideas with rich characters and a page-turning plot, superbly written.

Characters and Collective

‘Birnam Wood’ is separated into three parts and the story is told via several character perspectives. As well as Mira, there’s her second in command Shelley, who’s much more hands-on in her approach. There’s a conflict brewing between them, as Shelley feels the collective isn’t making any progress and she wonders what she’s doing with her life.

There’s also Sir Owen Darvish, a pest control entrepreneur, and his wife Lady Jill, unable to keep quiet about their recently acquired fortune. And Tony Gallo, recently returned and is determined to make his mark as an investigative journalist, whilst not mentioning the fact that he survives off a trust fund. He and Mira also had a ’thing’ a while back.

Doomsteader

Billionaire Robert Lemoine has his own ideas about riding out the apocalypse as a ‘doomsteader’ with a survivalist bunker. Representing the worst in greed and corruption, he’s a morally ambiguous megalomaniac. Can you compromise your ethics and expect to make a deal with a man like this?

It’s a book that explores ideas about activism. How far would compromise your beliefs if it meant that it would allow you to achieve all of your aims and more? Is there such a thing as caring capitalism? And can big business be stopped, and will it ultimately consume us all? The biggest question of all when it comes to politics - where does the real power lie?

There are power shifts in relationships as well, with changing dynamics between the characters, each trying to get the upper hand. I liked how Cotton slowly reveals their personalities, showing their motivations. She’s superb at creating detailed and believable characters.

Power

There’s one long ‘hui' in a kitchen, that I think might not have worked in another writer’s hands, as Tony’s idealism ‘jars’ with some of the other members. But not with Catton, and there’s a wonderful back and forth to the argument, very much central to many of the ideas in the book.

It's also about greenwashing, social activism, and privilege. I don’t know enough about New Zealand politics to comment on how close it is to reality, but the clash between environmentalism and capitalism is something that is never far from the headlines. It feels like the two are oil and water.

It’s a complex book, but always readable. I enjoyed the initial setup, which was quite satirical and often funny. I did read ’the luminaries’ and as much as I enjoyed it I have to say that this is a lot more accessible and for me much more of a page-turner.

Conflict

It does a great job of letting you get to know the characters, then putting them into conflict with one another. The characters are multi-faceted and complex, and just when you think you’ve understood them, they show you another side to them. They are wonderfully complicated, at times thoroughly dislikable, and flawed, but make for great characters to drive the plot.

I have to say I didn’t have a notion how 'Birnam Wood' was going to end up and I enjoyed the twists along the way; Elizabeth Catton does a fine job of ratcheting up to a conclusion I could never have guessed at. Thoroughly enjoyed this.

My abiding memory of Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries is that it was intimidatingly hefty, slow to start, but ultimately hugely enjoyable.

Birnam Wood is a little over half its size, and it's a propulsive read. It could be described as a scheming billionaire vs. newly-minted landed gentry vs. a bunch of well-meaning guerilla gardeners, but that wouldn't do it justice. Catton presents here a group of disparate viewpoints, all with overlapping interests focused on farmlands near a landslide at the fictional Korowai pass. The guerilla gardeners, who took their name from Macbeth and shared it with this book, don't have much ambition beyond maybe incorporating and spreading their ideas. The landed gentry would like some money to go with their new titles. The billionaire wants...more.

There is a real and necessary corrective in here for the current cult of billionaire-worship, and a lot of excellent snark about so many rich people wanting to build apocalypse bunkers in New Zealand.

All of the characters from the wannabe journalist to the scheming billionaire are skillfully drawn, nuanced characters with the capacity to surprise. No-one is omniscient, no one is without flaws, there are no saints here. Overthinking and miscommunication happen. People do bad things for good reasons and vice-versa.

This is a book that really engages with the messiness of people and human relationships. What we want, what we'd settle for, and why do people who have everything never believe that it's enough?
It's also one heck of a good thriller and kept me turning pages way past bedtime.

I was excited to read the long anticipated novel from Booker Prize Winner Eleanor Catton. Her latest offering is less weighty than The Luminaries both in size of tome and also in literary content, which I have to stress isn’t a negative thing. It’s a very accessible and quick to read psychological/environmental thriller set in New Zealand’s Korowai National Park centring on a guerrilla gardening group called Birnam Wood. It features wannabe investigative journalists, megalomaniac billionaires and Knights of the Realm and addresses some very real environmental issues and moral dilemmas. Who exactly is the baddie here?

I’ve seen it listed as an eco thriller – but this is definitely more literary fiction. We’re talking about the author won the Booker Prize level literary fiction. It’s a long book with a lot of complex characters and situations to keep track of, but I found that sticking with it at a slow and steady pace, gave me quite the pay off. Politics, relationships, family, and yes, the environment all playing out amongst the backdrop of human nature. I’t’ll definitely be on all the year’s. best lists - you can say you read it first.

Reviews have been really mixed for this one - cue moderate expectations - so imagine my surprise when I absolutely loved it! Refreshing, richly conceived, witty, layered and thrilling.

Birnam Wood had it all for me - superb writing, an intricate plot, great setting in NZ, masterful world-building, social commentary and morally ambiguous characters all tied up in a propulsive literary thriller that will surely be turned into a film. It reminded me of Rebecca Makkai's book in many ways - the author is such a talented writer and storyteller that you cannot help but keep turning pages and be wowed by her skill.

Set mainly in the fictitious Korowai National Park in New Zealand, Birnam Wood is the tale of an American billionaire Robert Lemoine, outwardly seeking a site for his survivalist bunker (but with hidden, malevolent intentions), a guerilla-operating vegetable-growing non-profit outfit called Birnam Wood who have grand intentions of achieving on a bigger scale, a happily married couple (Sir Owen and Lady Darvish) who own a significant piece of land adjacent to the National Park that is much sought after by both, and a disenchanted former Birnam Wood Berniebro who doesn't trust the NZ government not to betray its countrymen by exploiting the country's natural assets for gain.

Catton begins by introducing each of the characters one by one, building a picture of their personalities, motivations and ethics. The story builds slowly so as some readers have said, a little patience may be required (though I was gripped by the story early on). The payoff is worth it as the story builds to a dramatic climax. I was never drawn to Catton's Booker winning novel, The Luminaries, which sounds completely different to this. However, on the strength of Birnam Wood, I picked up a secondhand copy of The Rehearsal, her debut novel. Loved it. 5/5 stars

I have to admit that I struggled to get into the story. It felt rather slow at times and I could not connect to all of the characters. But I grew to like it more as the story continued. The last third definitely is much faster paced.
I'm usually not a huge fan of overly political novels, but I think Eleanor Catton handled her topic well. The politics serve a purpose and help the story arc. (Plus, I'm a huge fan of Macbeth so I liked all the allusion to Shakespeare's play.)
Catton can write characters well, but I enjoyed following some characters more than others which lessened my enjoyment a bit on the whole.

This is the first Catton novel I have read and I was very impressed by the author’s skill, her use of language and technical composition are outstanding.

I have seen this billed as an eco thriller, ‘hippies versus billionaires’ with allusions to Macbeth from the title onwards. It is all these things as well as quite a comic social and political commentary at times. In fact the reason I have given this 4 rather than 5 stars is the sometimes overlong expositions on climate change which didn’t work for me as part of the novel. But it is gripping and made me want to read more by the author.

Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a review copy.

Guerilla gardeners + American billionaire + a tense multi-perspective narrative in the New Zealand countryside? Count me in.

This was a dense book told in three parts and the lack of chapters made me a bit apprehensive about my approach to reading it: we all know that I struggle to stop reading mid-chapter, so this proved to be a real test...

Catton’s writing, while dense, flows well and is incredibly engaging! The little hooks at the end of each perspective kept me coming back for more. I had no idea where this one was going and the blurb doesn't give anything away. I don't even know how to fully explain it without waffling.

This goes in hard with politics in places, but it all serves a purpose and really adds an interesting slant in terms of the overall arc. The first two parts definitely felt overly heavy, though it provided everything for a truly bananas final third.

Some characters I enjoyed following and rooting for and others I couldn't help but love to hate - I'm being deliberately vague here.

I'm feeling much better about it now that I've finished it and can appreciate it as a sum of its individual parts.

Check it out