This is one of those books that I’ve been thinking about a lot since I finished reading. It’s a real mish-mash of elements, part thriller, part social satire, part interesting character drama with some great action set-pieces, part call to arms, very zeitgeisty but all told with immense literary flare. Ostensibly an eco-thriller, Birnham Wood tells the story of a small-town New Zealand commune, it’s members living a bohemian existence on the edges of society using guerilla tactics to enforce their sustainability agenda to grow food on urban land they do not own. Basically do-gooder anarchists. After their fiery de facto leader Mira Bunting has a chance encounter with an American tech-billionaire, Robert Lemoine, a faction of the group moves to a remote farm that Lemoine has purchased from recently knighted local businessman Owen Darvish and his wife Jill. They believe Lemoine plans to turn this farm into a doomsday bunker- a lavish safe-haven to survive the inevitable apocalypse. However, Lemoine has more nefarious plans. As Mira and Lemoine strike up an unlikely friendship, tensions between the groups and their various illegal activities ratchet and ideologies clash with devastating consequences.

This is such bold and epic book with so many moving parts. The beginning quarter does a really good job of introducing all the different characters and laying the groundworks for the unfolding drama. I wouldn’t say I found this section slow, because Catton has a really delicious prose style and her efficient descriptions build interesting and believable characters, but I really got engrossed once Birnham Wood had moved to Lemoine’s farm and the tension started to build up as all the groups intertwine in various ways. It continues building to a really explosive ending. I really couldn’t call where this novel was heading which made it gripping but I do think the way it ends will be very divisive. Initially, I felt it was abrupt and left me unsatisfied. On reflection I’m still not 100% convinced, but admire the audacity even if I would have preferred it to be more neatly wrapped up.

The narrative is peppered with some quite long sections of dialogue where the characters espouse varied political viewpoints and at times this became a little didactic for me and drew me out of the main narrative. But overall it presents an interesting examination of contemporary New Zealand’s attitudes to wealth and climate. The characters could very easily have been archetypes – the evil billionaire, the naïve environmentalist – but instead they are complex and feel very human. However I didn’t find any particularly likeable, so found it a jarring reading experience where you’re not really rooting for anyone in particular – especially towards the end when you’re not sure who you want to triumph.

Overall I really admired this book. It’s a really enjoyable read and challenging in the best way. I didn’t wholeheartedly and unreservedly love it, but there were so many aspects that made me really think and even months after finishing the book there are still many scenes that are visually imprinted in my memory. For me the ending let it down slightly, but from the other reviews I’ve read, this is probably just personal preference. I know I will have a lot of interesting conversations with my friends once they’ve read it too!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy which was provided in return for an honest review.

Eleanor Catton raised the bar really high with her internationally acclaimed, and rightly so, work "The Luminaries". Her follow-up seems to be trying very hard, to go above and beyond that standard, and it attempts to do so by picking at ideas that are broader and wilder, and quite starker than that predecessor.

I recently heard an interview Ms. Catton gave to NYT Book Review, where she briefly explains where the story is coming from, and what her intentions were in trying to cover such a wide range of subjects. While I found the coverage reasonably broad, the story seems to falter when trying to justify the scope and breadth of its subject matter. Eco-terrorism is mentioned more than once in that interview, and in fact in many other blurbs as well when describing this novel. In the book, however, while there is a mention of a lot of intent around eco-terrorism, what actually transpires hardly rises to the level of terrorism. In sheer didactic terms, the acts of the book's namesake collective would find it hard to elicit any terror - just mild to repeated irritation over what seem rather minor transgressions, that perhaps taken together make them a criminal enterprise, an outlaw at most. Not terrorists. The motley group is a collection of hobbyist activists, and therein lies the true rub of this novel. A bit of over-promise and under-deliver.

Structurally, the book is divided into three sections, without any further sub-divisions or chapters. So, one gets the sense of plodding through a desert of dense writing, that at one point uses up a whole page describing the contents of an emergency kit. Must we really feign interest in knowing that this character carries toothpaste and toothbrush and compass, among other paraphernalia, when I'd rather see how the supposed thriller element of the story is progressing? Ms. Catton often goes into long winding descriptions of minutiae, that ostensibly seem to be towards character building, but in effect go only to further diffuse and obfuscate an already somewhat flimsy plotline.

The billionaire trope is well used, and perhaps is the only one that is not genuinely difficult to follow in terms of their motivations and intents. There are long backstories that clearly demonstrate a superlative literary talent, but one that's ultimately unable to use most of those same rather well-defined character traits when it actually comes time to show what her characters are really made of. The Dervishes are endearing and their story is affecting, and their interactions are bound to bring a smile to any reader's face - and that leads me to my other big gripe with the novel.

Ms. Catton clearly excels when it comes to character dialog and actual interaction, yet she insists on telling us everything conceivably interesting and remotely relevant about her characters in third-person narrative. She doesn't really give her characters enough of a chance to actually be themselves. Rather, a large part of the book is devoted to the author telling you what her characters are doing, why they are doing it, and in painstaking detail how exactly they are doing it. Showing, and showing well should have sufficed.

The ending is surprising and lethal and surprisingly lethal, and goes by so fast you'd almost miss it if you weren't looking out for it.

If similar brevity had been exercised in the first nine-tenths of the book, the end result would have been very different.

I love a deeply layered, detailed, complex story that is full of nuance and complicated motivations. I haven't read Catton's previous book The Luminaries, although I have been meaning to for years, but I found this story to be a captivating albeit very dense one. Overall it was a very enjoyable read.

Wow! This book was so interesting. This fast-paced psychological thriller has an intricate, beautifully structured plot, interesting characters and something constantly going on. Its one of those rare books that is fast-paced and thought provoking, while also having well-developed characters and a unique plot. This is sure to be one of the most discussed book of the year. Highly recommended. I received a complimentary copy of this book via NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

“And I've been in the citadels of power,' he added. 'I've eaten at the high tables; I've seen behind the doors that never open. Everyone's the same. You reach a certain level and it's all exactly the same: it's all just luck and loopholes and being in the right place at the right time, and compound growth taking care of the rest. That's why we're all building barricades. It's in case the rest of you ever figure out how incredibly easy it was for us to get to where we are.” Here is the 0.01% for you…

Looking at the title, you might expect this book to some sort of retelling of Macbeth. But it’s not Birnam Wood was there. It was moving but underground. There was a lady woke up a murderer. There was a guy found his maker trying to uncover a conspiracy. That was it.

I wished there was no connection with Macbeth. If I didn’t have that expectation, I’m sure my take of this story would be different. I loved the promise of Birnam Wood initiative of guerrilla farming. If we have all that space on the sides of the roads or in our backyards, why shouldn’t we do this ourselves?! I liked the activism initiated, it I found it also discouraging that it fell into wrong hands at the end. That’s how 0.01% supposedly support initiatives and make them die down.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I am sure that there is some more obvious MacBeth parallel here that I am not drawing -- it seems to me that there are some clear lines, but otherwise, I thought that the narrative was rather dragging until it gave me reason enough to hate all of these people and want to see if something bad happened to them.

That being said, I think the ending was absolutely nuts. It reminded me of the play "The Ferryman" in which three hours of drama and tension build to an explosive and violent last few minutes.

3.5 stars for the shock value.

So SO good, but you've got to stick with it. It starts slowly, but accelerates in a rush. Very hard to put down once it gets going.
Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the complimentary copy

I liked the first section of the book, but I lost interest when Mira became the focus. It was a bit disappointing as I had high hopes for this book.

An awesome suburban Shakespeare sendup. Think Big Little lies meets literary shakespeare classic. What a blast.

This book was a wild ride. I wasn't sure what to expect so I was surprised by the dark themes and eco-thriller component. Most of the characters are unlikeable, but that's what makes a book interesting to me. Horrible people doing questionable things for questionable reasons. Definitely recommend to anyone interested in politics, conservation, activism, and the seedy underbelly of all of it.

A must read if you are looking for a well written book with intricate characters. I became interested in reading this book after seeing a review in the New Yorker by BD McClay that described this book as having a “plot” whereas many books nowadays are written with a somewhat contrived template of a storyline (I am likely summarizing that review poorly, but the review is as well written and interesting as the book-if I were the author, I would be saying, “this reviewer gets me!”). I also read this book because I loved Catton’s earlier book, The Luminaries.

As reviewer McClay describes it, “everything that people choose to do matters, albeit not in ways they may have anticipated.” That is what makes this book fascinating. While the characters stumble around making self- interested decisions, we are shown how someone else is impacted, sometimes with dreadful consequences. The plot is thick with twists and turns and even though the book starts out as a book about a farming co-op, that is not what this book is about (no spoilers here). An excellent read.

Thank you NetGalley for an ARC.

The quote “Macbeth shall never vanquished be until/Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill/Shall come against him” is another way of saying, “Don’t worry, Macbeth: you’ll be fine.

Nothing is really fine in this look at the horrors of capitalism veering out of control in New Zealand. Mira Bunting here has created an eco-activist group who plant on unused land -- sometimes illegally – and Shelly Noakes is her dependable and gradually disenchanted friend who serves as her second in command. But then Mira chances across Robert Lemonine, a cartoonish billionaire who is ready to hand over $100,000 to this group for a nefarious reason of his own (and the fact that Mira is attractive, and intriguing also doesn’t hurt). The land in question is owned by a Kiwi pest-control empire farmer who gladly is willing to turn the property over to Lemoine as a result of a recent earthquake.

Yet I couldn’t help but feel that this time, Eleanor Catton, an excellent writer, was a little too ambitious for her own goals. As a character-based reader, I had to ask myself: is being a billionaire necessarily “bad”? It’s all too easy to paint this kind of caricature, but Robert Lemonine is over the top – secretive, greedy, full of himself, and dare I add, evil? There were many actions he took – to mention them would create spoilers – that seemed at odds with the “smarts” of a consummate businessman who carefully examines all contingencies. And was Mira THAT appealing to him that he was willing to use Birnam Woods to advance his plan?

I also felt as if I were reading two separate books. The entire first half is slow to gain steam with a drill down look at the characters and their philosophical motivations. I was waiting for lift-off and I got it in the second half of the book, which suddenly claims thriller, or at the very least, cinematic territory. Was I interested? Oh, yes. But in the grand scheme of things, was the plot line fully plausible? In more than a few instances, I wanted to say, “Wait! Limonine wouldn’t do that, given what we know about him.”

It’s certainly a good book, with a fair share of political and philosophical rants, drones and surveillance, characters we can easily imagine making it to the big screen, and a Hollywood type ending. I can’t help but note that other reviewers, whom I respect, gave Birnam Wood a more positive review. So by all means, read this eco-thriller. The pages start to go quickly. My sincere thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for the privilege of reading this book in exchange for an honest review.

First published in Great Britain in 2023; published by ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux on March 7, 2023

Is there something subversive about planting vegetables on property owned by other people? Birnam Wood is an anti-capitalist cooperative in New Zealand, a “grassroots community initiative” to plant “sustainable organic gardens in neglected spaces” while fostering “a commitment to help those in need.” Some of the planting is done openly. Other times it is clandestine. I’m not sure most people would care if “guerilla plantings” resulted in vegetables growing alongside highway off ramps or in junkyards. As social change organizations go, Birnam Wood is even more of a yawner than most. Still, the plant activists seem to have righteous intentions, so good on them.

Mira Bunting has spent many “lost years” working with Birnam Wood, perhaps in the hope that she will demonstrate organizational skills that might appeal to an employer. Shelley Noakes is a more natural manager but she is tired of the group’s “suffocating moral censure.” She would like to get out or Birnam Wood. More importantly, she would like to get out of her relationship with Mira, who fails to treat her with the love and respect that Shelley believes to be her due.

Mira is planting secret vegetables on land near a National Park owned by Owen Darvish when she spots a small airplane on a private landing strip. The pilot is Robert Lemoine, a billionaire who made a fortune from drones. Lemoine explains to Mira that he’s buying the land from Darvish so he can install a survivalist bunker in which he can wait out whatever environmental catastrophe will first arrive. Mira justifies her trespass by telling Lemoine about Birnam Wood. He seems taken with the idea, or perhaps with Mira, and agrees to provide preliminary funding so that the organization can expand. The reader soon learns of Lemoine's hidden agenda.

A founding member who has been traveling, Tony Gallo, makes an unexpected appearance at the latest Birnam Wood meeting. Tony once had a thing with Mira. Tony doesn’t get along with Shelley. He’s “increasingly at odds with the prevailing orthodoxies of the contemporary feminist left, which seemed to him to have abandoned the worthy goal of equality between the sexes in pursuit of either naked self-interest or revenge.” Tony was doing personal journalism until he was accused of writing an essay that amounted to poverty tourism and revealed his white privilege. Now Tony is looking for a way back into journalism without becoming an actual journalist. To do that, he needs to do the kind of investigative reporting that will reinforce his progressive credentials.

Mira presents Lemoine's funding offer at the meeting while carefully refraining from endorsing the billionaire or the capitalism he represents. Tony opposes Mira’s proposal to accept dirty money from Lemoine. The other members are swayed by the promise of a cash infusion for their precarious organization. Tony walks away from Birnam Wood but senses an opportunity to showcase his chops as an investigative journalist. Tony reasons that a billionaire who throws money at a leftist group must be up to something. Tony’s instincts are sound. He discovers that Lemoine is involved in a secret project that will get him into big trouble if he’s exposed.

The plot hinges on the project’s secrecy. Lemoine is doing something on a significant scale in a national forest. Doesn’t anyone in New Zealand enter its national forests? It’s difficult to believe that Lemoine’s scheme would have even a remote chance of operating undetected, but I don’t know enough about New Zealand to be sure of that. The story develops some suspenseful moments as Tony hides in the woods, evading drones and capture as he gathers evidence of Lemoine’s operation, but suspense remains low-key for most of the story.

I can’t agree with the novel’s billing as a literary thriller. It is literary in the sense of being well written, with ample attention to character development, although the literary nature of the prose creates a pace that is inconsistent with a thriller. I wouldn’t want to accuse Eleanor Catton of writing run-on sentences, but readers might want to put on comfortable shoes before walking from the beginning to the end of her paragraphs. I have little patience with thriller writers who manufacture “page turners” by putting few words on a page, but Catton goes too far in the opposite direction. She rivals Henry James in her ability to create a scene by describing every single object in sight, including (in Catton’s case) the varieties of spinach and beets and cabbages and cauliflowers and leeks and carrots (and on and on) planted by Birnam Wood.

The novel’s most promising moments come during an argument at a Birnam Wood meeting about the nature of political and economic change and the ineffectual, scolding approach taken by some members of the left. The novel spotlights the in-fighting that make many organizations, and particularly groups comprised of progressive volunteers, completely dysfunctional. "Im pure in my ideals and everyone else is a sellout" isn't the kind of attitude that assures the planting of subversive cabbage patches.

Yet the novel bogs down with conflicts between Mira and Shelley, both of whom seem to develop a thing for Lemoine for reasons that are less than obvious. Chalk it up to billionaire charm, I suppose. The novel is contaminated by sentences like “She wished she could tell her friend the honest truth, which was not that she loved her because she needed her, but that she needed her because she loved her, and in her monumental stupidity and self-absorption, she had only just figured that out.” Self-absorption infects all the speaking characters, but that makes them more annoying than interesting.

I give Birnam Wood high marks for an original if not entirely convincing plot. The final pages are over the top. Perhaps those pages reflect a literary determination to eschew happy or predictable endings, but it is predictable for that very reason. Despite the novel’s flaws, including its pace and disagreeable characters, my inability to guess what might happen next kept me reading with full attention.

RECOMMENDED

What a wild and fun read and a blistering and crazy look at the evils of capitalism. This thriller is a twisty interesting read about an Eco-activist group in New Zealand that becomes entangled with a wealthy American.
The writing is taught and the storytelling is fast and furiously engaging.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and thank netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for my review.

I honestly don't even remember requesting this book, but it was on my dashboard so I read it.
Birnam Wood is a strange combination of a little (too much) Ayn Rand, but if she was a SJW, a dash (too light) of Barbara Kingsolver, and a generous sprinkle of Tom Clancy. Then, THEN, it turns to full on Ruth Ware-Paula Hawkins-Gillian Flynn territory.
Does that sound painful? It was, and way too long. I found myself skimming multiple pages at a time of navel-gazing monologues that made me want to DNF but other reviews insisted the book picked up, so I soldiered on.
ARC has 3 large chapters with indiscernible breaks between character/scene shifts. Could easily be broken down into chapters within the 3 sections to make it easier to decipher and less confusing. Not sure if this is corrected in final published version.
The book is set in New Zealand but the author's note says the places mentioned are all invented. Overall, just too much in one book that could have been a much slimmer volume.

I have mixed feelings about this book. It started off really slow, but then it picked up. The ending was not what I expected.

I was challenged to finish reading Birnam Wood and still don't know what to make of it. It was a little slow for me and extremely detailed in a way that did not bring me joy. I found it difficult to connect with any of the characters. I'll leave this review here and you can decide if this will be your next read.

**I received an electronic ARC from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review of this book.

Who would have thought, after her first two novels (both of which I also unabashedly gave 5-star reviews), that youngest Booker-winner Catton would suddenly go all Tarantino on our asses? But after a 10-year bout of writer's block, Catton has come roaring back to life with what MGHT be her best novel yet. I had a bit of unease in the first 10% of this, since I found it hard to retain much of the exposition - but soon afterwards, the novel shifted into 1st gear and didn't let up till the unexpected and bloody great conclusion.

My only other minor quibble is that delicious arch villain Robert Lemoine so dominates the novel, that the other three major characters - Mira, Tony and Shelley - collectively don't even hold a candle to his dominating presence. Still, this novel does everything I want literary fiction to do ... and does it effortlessly. I fully expect to see this on the 2023 Booker longlist - and wouldn't be surprised if Catton became the youngest double winner in Booker history.

I'm conflicted about this book. On the one hand, the first 65% bored me. It seemed to be all dialogue of boorish men mansplaining and philosophizing. I almost gave up so many times and it took me forever to get through. At 65% something big happens and the story took off! It was suspenseful and action packed. I couldn't put it down! Then I got to the end, and the ending was infuriating! I wanted to toss the book across the room! (I have a kindle so I would never!) I was so angry at the ending that I was mad at myself for not quitting the book and pushing through to the end. It just wasn't worth it! I felt it ended just when things were getting really good and it left the fates of some characters up in the air. I don't usually mind an ambiguous ending that doesn't wrap up all the threads but after suffering through most of this rather long book I was disappointed and absolutely livid! our experience may vary from mine and I hope it is more satisfying for you. For me this was just painful and fell short.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing an Electronic Advance Reader Copy via NetGalley for review.

I tried to like Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries. On paper the story seemed so big and intriguing but it was so complicated and I felt like I didn't really feel all of the threads of the plot weave together at the end. I was unsure if Birnam Wood would be more of the same but it couldn't be more different. Where The Luminaries had multiple timelines and perspectives, a cast of characters rivaling a high fantasy series, and lots of red herrings, Birnam Wood is scaled down, has only a handful of characters and tells its story more or less in linear, chronological fashion.

Birnam Wood has the feel of many contemporary fiction writers who happen to be millenials. Meditating on political ideals, usually left leaning, and exploring the existential crises of our time while serving up a compulsive plot.

I think Catton manages to present all of the characters in nuanced perspective. Sometimes a extreme political bent in a character reads as propagandized trope but I felt like the complexity of Mira, Tony, and Robert's worldviews read as authentic.

A fun read for anyone who is a fan of character driven thrillers.