This book was absolutely incredible! I loved it It is the perfect combination of plot and character development and meaningful thought-provoking economic, social and ecological issues.

I was looking forward to this read as The Luminaries is one of my all-time favorites! Set in New Zealand, this is a contemporary thriller. Birnam Wood is the name chosen for an activist collective, founded by Mira Bunting, that plants crops sometimes legally, most often not. Looking for their next major opportunity the group finds one in an abandoned farm, following a landslide that isolates the town of Thorndike. There’s Shelley, Mira’s right-hand person, Tony who was part of Birnam Wood recently returned after have been away for some years, the owners of the property - the Davishes, and the entrepreneur American Robert Lemoine who wants the land for his own purposes. It’s an intricate web of characters, desires, goals, and ambition. Some of the characters in particular were well portrayed - complex and conflicted (I won’t say who wasn’t!), intelligent yet gullible, and in many ways blinded by a naive drive to “do good.” I thought the themes in the book are so on point - contemporary and relevant. I will say I didn’t like the ending! I thought the book was well done and enjoyable and definitely recommend it. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

A daunting opening to a book (but worth the slog) that I actually thought was going to be about raising vegetables.

What starts out as a long exposition of the political viewpoints of our main characters, becomes a literary statement on economics and the environment, and ends as a thriller. Phew! Each character represents a slice of society with their own agendas, and through the close proximity of this clandestine garden, we get to see how they all interact. I predict there will be much discussion of the off-the-rails ending!

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an advance readers copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Birnam Wood is the story of a guerrilla gardening collective, of the same name, who plant crops all around New Zealand, in discreet locations. The group, led by Mira and Shelley, had been struggling financially for years when an American billionaire, Robert, offered to finance the groups’ activities on his property. The book continues on to explore the doubts amongst the community about the true nature of Robert’s intentions and what this partnership means for their group.

This book was definitely a slow burn and took a bit of time for me to get into in the beginning. However, in each sitting, once I got into the story, it was easy to stay hooked, especially because of the authors stellar writing. There was a lot of character buildup and many philosophical conversations but, they were easy to enjoy and get lost into. I enjoyed the character development quite a lot and appreciated the holistic view of each person’s strengths/flaws. I think the book picked up steam for me about halfway through and from there, I was quickly turning pages until the end (which was very dramatic and excellent!).

I’d definitely recommend this to literary fiction fans, especially if you enjoy a slow burn literary mystery. It was not a fast paced thriller by any means but, rather I think the kind of story that makes you feel satisfied/accomplished after reading!

I had high hopes for Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood, a thriller set in New Zealand and featuring an American billionaire who’s snatched up land for his end of times luxury bunker and a guerrilla gardening collective who views the same property as the ultimate squat for farming.

I struggled with this book. The first half was a slog and focused on the inner ideological monologues of several main characters. The second half of the book saw more action and lots of dialogue.

It just didn’t work for me, sadly.

What?!

I went to bed upset by this book, I woke up upset, and I’m still fuming—in the best way.

We have a guerilla gardening group, the kind that’s mostly harmless and that would just be called gardeners (or maybe farmers) in the world they call the Third. We have a scheming billionaire, who wants what all billionaires want: more $$$. And then we have the hapless farmer and his wife who have land in an area the billionaire is interested in, abutting a national park in New Zealand—which is where the three sets of characters intersect.

I mean, I take my hat off to Catton for the form she used to entrap me. The first 64% of the book honestly feels like a really long run-on sentence, like Virginia Woolf’s famous “invention”, stream-of-consciousness, or like Katherine Mansfield’s Bliss (which is a good intimation, btw)—in other words, you’re just getting basic monologues of the characters’ thoughts. Also actual monologues. I was at about three stars out of five up to that point; like, sure, good, mindless literary fiction, let’s enjoy all of the many words (except, I was thinking to myself I know I’ve been exposed to too many romance book blurbs because I truly didn’t expect the billionaire to be an actual baddie in the bad sense of the word, in spite of the hint in the very name of the book). At 65%, Catton decided to switch up on me, and I couldn’t put the book down anymore.

I remember struggling through the 848 pages of The Luminaries, wondering if I could stick around long enough for things to get going; and at first I really thought I was about to have the same experience with Birnam Wood. I am happy to report that this is satisfyingly, emphatically not what happened. I cannot shout more loudly about the horror of what Catton does to the characters, and to us her poor readers. I imagine her chortling as she writes the first two thirds of the book, delighting in how she’s about to bring down the sky on all of us. Because that, dear Reader, is what happens in the rest of the book.

So, if you want to read a chew-your-nails-off thriller this year, this is it. This is your book. 5/5 stars.

Oh, and the Macbeth reference? Yes.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for this very fun (in the end) ARC.

A piece of land, a National Park. A lord and his wife.A billionaire. An aspiring journalist. A group of kamikaze gardeners trying to make the world a better place. And finally a mining of precious metals.
There is a lot packed into this novel. Birnam Wood is a group using sustainable practices to grow foods that is then used to continue the support of their group but also to feed people. They have issues, all of them.
The billionaire wants his land, but not for the reasons he states. And the journalist wants that big story.
It all comes crashing together in this novel that reads in part, like an action novel, and a love story.
Highly recommended. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me this ARC

A multilayered thriller, part eco drama, part political commentary, with billionaires, class privilege and eco-terrorism juxtaposed against the ideals of the founder of Birnam Wood, a collective that plants vegetables in unmarked and uncared for lots and sustains its operations by the sales of the plantings its cultivates. This is also a deep character driven story as well: Mira Bunting, the collective's founder has found a financial savior - Robert Lemoine - for the group in an unlikely American billionaire in the business of drone surveillance. In agreeing to Lemoine's support, Mira has literally and unknowingly made a deal with the devil.

I'd suggest that readers stick with the first third of the book which is dense with the philosophy of Mira and her peers, along with Lemoine, and kind of goes off on very long tangents that definitely foreshadow events to come in the later portions of the book. It picks up speed and by the last third it morphs into a thrilling page-turner. Lots to ponder as the book concludes. Not sure I loved the ending but it surely will provoke dialogue versus making this a treatise on good versus evil. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

This book, set in New Zealand centers around a young group of gardeners who feel all land needs to be used for good. To promote this, they trespass and set up gardens in secret. While their intentions are to do good, they definitely have a rebel streak. While they have worked together for years, there are tensions in the group that begin to break things down. Each character had many different “faces” This book delves in crime and politics yet was beautifully written and intriguing.

Eleanor Catton is a fine writer, and I really enjoyed <I>The Luminaries</I>, but this book didn't do anything for me. The main issue is that I couldn't bring myself to care about any of the characters, as the cast consists of a frankly psychopathic billionaire and a bunch of environmentalists who spend half of the time engaged in a kind of cannibalistic leftist argument about ideological purity and so on that I find exhausting. I don't think they're supposed to be likeable, per se (I seem to remember a snippet of another review that quoted a Catton interview where she said she wanted to write a book where everyone was in the wrong but thought they were in the right), but it's still an obstacle, and when things take a more "eco-thriller"-y turn most of the way through the book I found myself entirely uninvested in whether anyone would get away with any of the handful of crimes and schemes swirling around.

Wow! Smart, complex, and such great writing where the characters leap off the page - the dialogue had me laughing like I was watching a play - that’s how the words leapt off the page for me. This is a story about an ecological group intersecting with a billionaire and the choices and decisions therein. GREAT for a book group to discuss. Pick this one up now.

Out darn spot! This book reaffirms that no matter the context, Eleanor Catton is an exquisite writer. Birnam Wood is long, but doesn’t drag and is able to explore imagery and character development in-depth without compromising the pace. It’s a very intriguing story, that felt like a bit of a bibliophiles dream. It was very philosophical and introspective without being overly cerebral. It felt like a practical philosophy book.

The story of Birnam Wood, closely parallels Shakespeare’s Macbeth and reminds us that “Absolute power corrupts, absolutely”. I’m still in shock from just how quickly the end of the book escalated, snowballing into the perfect storm.

I have nothing but the highest praise for Birnam Wood. From its complex characters to its beautiful writing and perfectly executed plot, there’s something for everyone in this political thriller/tragedy. In addition, it’s just a ton of FUN! A must read.

Complex, multi-layered, and compulsively readable, Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton is a gripping thriller, with teeth. This story defies categorization; with political and philosophical elements, all wrapped up in suspense. The characters have real meat on their bones, and you really can't help but hope it works out for them, even in the face of their cynicism. There were some sections a bit dry for me, maybe just because I don't know New Zealand politics particularly well. Thank you to Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and Netgalley for the chance to review this advance copy.

I read this book too recently and I've not really recovered yet. With clear inspiration from Macbeth, it's full of characters with strong personal goals and ambitions, and with obvious blind spots where their morality collides with their self-interest. I loved Mira and Shelley in particular, and getting to know them from inside their own heads. The shifting of perspective was really effective; even point-of-view characters I didn't much like, I felt like I recognized. With the shifting points of view including a detailed exploration of each character's willful self-deceit, the book was also often softly amusing, in a quiet, Kiwi way—until it was decidedly, brutally, not. I didn't need this novel to tell me billionaires are unethical in their very existence and thus have an extremely distant personal relationship with ethics, I have all of reality to tell me that—but I have the impression that other people, who have gotten very different messages from reality, might get something very different out of this book.

How delighted I was to receive an advance copy of Birnam Woods from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The Booker Prize winning author Eleanor Catton returns with a character-driven literary thriller that has been on the “most anticipated books of 2023” lists of the New York Times, Lit Hub, Oprah, and other publications and the novel does not disappoint. Birnam Woods, an illusion to Macbeth, is an activist gardening collective founded by the 29 year old charismatic Mira Bunting. Birnam Woods cultivates empty tracts of land and, on those occasions when they obtain the landowners’ permission to access the space, provide the hosts with half the yield of every crop. When a landslide closes the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a former sheep station abandoned, Mira sees an opportunity for Birnam Wood to have a shot at financial viability. But, Mira must compete for the property with the billionaire founder of an American surveillance and drone-manufacturing company, Robert Lemoine, who has quietly bought the land to ostensibly build a doomsday bunker for the end-times. Lemoine, an obvious sendup of the Silicon Valley venture capitalist and contrarian Peter Thiel, finds himself challenged by his encounter with Mira. Needing to acquire a stake in a New Zealand business in order to obtain citizenship and seeking a subterfuge to shield his extraction of rare-earth minerals from a national park adjacent to the farm which will make him then “richest person who had ever lived” despite the environmental damage that he has already unleashed, Lemoine decides to fund Birnam Wood’s activities. The question raised by the satirical novel is whether Birnam Woods can maintain its purity of purpose when it becomes associated with aggressively evil big tech. Birnam Wood is a dark and brilliant novel about the violence and tawdriness of late capitalism with a surprising conclusion that propels it into a truly great book.

The setting is New Zealand and the book will appeal to a variety of readers-ecologists,computer geeks, mystery-thriller lovers, and government conspiracy advocates. The characters are well depicted, and the complexities of the plot will keep you on your toes. It starts slowly and the political rants particularly in the first third of the book are at times tiresome but hang in there “ for the ride”.The ending is a total surprise, but absolutely fitting. A really good read, with lots of positives about the character traits of New Zealanders.

I read Birnam Wood and I did not know about the connection to Shakespeare's Macbeth and Shakespearean wit, drama, and immersion in character until I read some of the reviews. This is a dense book that takes a while to get through. Living most of my life in a major US city, the crime of guerrilla gardening seems like a petty crime that actually may do more good than harm. Throwing a few veggies in a vacant lot, behind buildings, or in a park for philanthropic good, seems like decent undertaking other than trespassing is involved.

The book is in three parts and the mystery comes in the third part when Mira meets Robert Lemoine. Robert is an American billionaire that buys land and claims he is building his end of the world bunker. However, he has other uses for the land that are not so honest. He allows the Birnam Wood group grow their crops on his land. This is where the book becomes a psychological thriller/crime novel.

The book does become interesting when the characters do what they must for their own survival. There are moral questions that come up in the book and consequences for actions and in action. I have recently read some books on morality and this book gives your some moral questions to ponder: right, wrong, good, evil, truth, lies.

While this may not have been my favorite book of 2023, it is a good read. I believe I missed some of the nuances that the author meant to get across. I enjoyed the book enough to recommend reading it. This book is not a fast paced crime novel. It will appeal more to someone interested in the political ideals, activism, and moral lines being crossed.

Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced copy of Birnam Wood in return for an honest review. #BirnamWood #NetGalley

I wanted to love this environmental thriller more than I did, but all in all it was an entertaining and very intriguing read. I definitely recommend giving it a try. You may love it as many others do!

My thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus & Giroux for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I think I’ve found another genre niche that speaks to me: criminal environmentalists. Birnam Wood is about a grassroots conservationist group in New Zealand that has the misfortune of crossing paths with a techbro billionare who, wonder of wonders, is planning on wreaking havoc on the environment to get even more rich. The story is broken up into 3 parts, and alternates between the POV of several main characters. And not a single one of these characters is a good person! A large portion of this book focuses on the inner mechanisms that go on within the MCs, and the author does not refrain from being brutally honest when it comes to each person’s faults — and I ate that shit up. I feel like the author gives just the right dose of cynicism for me to dislike each character fundamentally, yet root for them and sympathize for them in turn. I don’t think I truly got into the book until Part 3, but it really just pulled the whole thing together in a delicious way. And that ending! Did not expect that! I strongly recommend to those who enjoy slow-paced, suspenseful literary fiction.

I loved Eleanor Catton's Luminaries, a Booker Prize-winning novel that has remained among my favourites. At over 800 pages, I raced through The Luminaries with much enjoyment. Birnam Wood is only half its length, but I regret to say it seemed much longer. The narrative is thought-provoking. It includes political, philosophical, social, and environmental issues. It scrutinizes the main character's motivations, ideals, actions, beliefs, and outcomes intensely. The focus was on a diverse group of characters, none of whom I found appealing. It might be considered a complex literary mystery, and I felt it tedious for much of the plot. I think the book's format kept me from thoroughly engaging. Its long chapters, paragraphs, and run-on sentences were not in my comfort zone.

Birnam Wood is the name of a guerilla gardening group consisting of young women with an anti-capitalist agenda. They carry out their planting in abandoned areas and unused property. Some of their gardening they regard as philanthropic, and much is illegal. They sell some of their products but are far from breaking even. Birnam Wood is named after a quotation in MacBeth and gives a sense of foreboding. Some members would like a name change to a Maori phrase, but others consider this would be cultural appropriation. Its predominant members are its leader, Mira Bunting, Shelly Noakes, her second in command, and Tony Gallo, who has just returned from teaching in Mexico and backpacking in Central and South America. He resents the fact that he was raised in privilege. He feels underestimated and carries romantic feelings for Mira but is ignored. Tony's return to a Birnam Wood meeting results in his angry tirade against capitalism and rudely arguing with another member. After his outburst, he leaves the meeting feeling embarrassed and unwelcome. Mira is manipulative, and her ideas may be met with debate, but she usually comes out on top. Her best friend is Shelly, her second in command, who feels that Mira does not value her ideas and she wants out of the group.

A landslide has cut off the town of Thorndike. A large abandoned farm is owned by Owen Darvish and his wife, a loving conservative couple. He has just been knighted and is admired because he is involved with conservation, but he also is connected with a business that makes surveillance drones headed by an American billionaire, Robert Lemoine. Lemoine is a man of great charm, charismatic, and probably a psychopath. He informs Mira that he has bought Darvish's property and tells her that the Birnam Wood group is welcome to garden there. He offers the group a large sum of money as a starter. Machinery is excavating part of the land, which Lemoine says is for a survival bunker for himself when the apocalypse arrives. Can the gardening group trust him, and how well can they trust each other?

Everyone is led by self-interest and their own motivations. There is a lack of cooperation, secrets and deceit. How will Birnam Wood react to the infusion of a large sum of money from a billionaire, and what is his sudden interest in ecology? Tony aspires to become an investigative journalist and feels something underhanded is happening with Lemoine at its villainous centre. Tony now camps on the land, sleeping rough in the forest in bad weather. He uncovers shocking environmental degradation but is now in extreme danger and on the run.

The story hurtles towards a dark, bloody conclusion.
I wish to thank NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of Birnam Wood. The date of publication is set for March 7th.