After hearing about a devastating landslide on New Zealand’s South Island, Mira decides to assess the now cut-off and abandoned land as a potential location for a new outpost of Birnam Wood, the guerrilla gardening group that she leads. Birnam Wood’s mission is to plant crops, sometimes by permission and other times through trespass, on abandoned, underused, or unnoticed stretches of land throughout New Zealand to send a message about our capitalist society’s waste and inefficiency. The group is struggling as the book opens to make ends meet financially and to retain its membership. The landslide has created a massive opportunity for growth and publicity, which Mira is determined to take advantage of. When she arrives, she is surprised to find the quirky American billionaire Robert Lemoine already there, who offers the land and a sizable quantity of startup money to Birnam Wood. Lemoine is the CEO of a large company that specializes in surveillance drones, and it is almost immediately obvious to the reader that Lemoine has darker motivations attached to his gift, which are largely unknown to Mira and the group.

This book is gripping from start to finish and is probably best described as a slow burn with a fantastic structure. The book is told in alternating perspectives and as a result, readers know about the idiosyncrasies and motivations of each of the main characters (add in Birnam Wood’s second-in-command, a disgruntled former member, and the true owner of the land to the mix), as the book unfolds. The catch is that these internal plottings are not known to the other characters, leading to intrigue and peril. Things are not as they seem in this unique, psychological story set in the beauty of the New Zealand wilderness by a Booker Prize winning author with immense, glorious talent.

I do not normally give reviews on a book that I did not finish but in this case I felt the need to.

I barely dragged myself through part one of Birnam Wood, so this will be only about part one. This book is stream of consciousness writing and there are multiple story lines and POV characters that bleed into one another. So try to know immediately from one paragraph the next whose story you are on is difficult, you also have no idea how much is left of that segment. There are no chapters so it makes it hard to know where a stopping point is in the story.

Now that structure is out of the way, the story is boring and the characters are annoying. The bulk of the characters are Gen Z eco-fighters who go an "borrow" other peoples property so they can plant plants on public or other people's properties without their knowledge or consent. The story revolves around the leader of Birnam Wood (the eco group), Mira. When a natural disaster occurs several hours away she decides that this would be the best place to guerilla garden since all of the residents have left. While trespassing on a rich man's property she meets a billionaire tech designer who is there for is own, non-legal reasons.

Like I said, I found this characters so annoying that I did not want to read on but the worst part of part one is the meeting of Birnam Wood during which there is a very long discussion amongst a bunch of middle class white people discussing social injustices. It is a scene of the worst types of allies. I just could not go on after this. Not sure if the rest of the novel is better but at that point I did not care. None of these characters are heroes and I hoped they all failed.

Birnam Wood is a thriller mystery novel set in Thorndike, New Zealand and is Shakespearean in its wit, drama, and immersion in character. 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." 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). It’s worth it, as the story builds to a dramatic climax.Catton's writing is pleasurable to read and flows well. I enjoyed the concept of guerilla gardening - the gardening's group name is Birnam Wood. I think they found a good use for neglected and underutilized land. I don't know if these groups really exist, but it seems a good cause. There's a billionaire supposedly building an end of times bunker in New Zealand, Robert Lemoine, who is doing some real damage under the radar. The Birnam Wood group has created a threat to Lemoine and things get way out of hand.

I had not read a book by Eleanor Catton, so I was very curious to try Birnam Wood. It's a sprawling story about eco-activism, capitalism, and the ways we fool ourselves about our intentions (or how good we really are). It's a fascinating novel but perhaps a bit too sprawling for me, and the conclusion felt a bit much. Still, I appreciate how clever Catton is about building a world that exists in shades of grey.

Many thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this brilliant novel. This eco-thriller was terrific. This is my first of Ms. Catton's works. It will not be my last. She writes beautifully. So engaging, so interesting, This work builds up slowly and finishes with a bang. Highly recommended, one I will not forget.

OKAY BUT WHAT! This book. My gosh. Holy. Those are all the words that came to mind. It is SUCH a gripping read that was up for all the twists and turns. I couldn't imagine what was going to happen next and at the end, I was even more surprised than I had any anticipation of being!

Get. This. Book. Especially if you're looking for a little heart pumping drama in your life!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC!

Birnnam Wood caught my attention right from the beginning with a carefully constructed tale. The novel centers around idealistic dreamers hoping to save New Zealand's environment through questionably legal and definitely unprofitable organic farming operations whose leader is confronted with a gift that seems to be too good to be true.

An unspeakably wealthy multi-billionaire recluse sets out to buy land made less valuable by an historically large avalanche. The land, he says, is perfectly situated for the bunker he plans to build. When he catches the Birnam Woods farmers growing crops on the property he offers to help fund their operations. Most welcome his offer, but not everyone. His motives are not kept secret from the reader, but the story is not so much about his motives as it is a character study in what motivates the other individuals affected by his offer, including the family that has agreed to sell the property to him. A very good read. which I highly recommend.

An engaging work that casts a powerful light on activism, climate control and betrayal. There were many characters to love in this book..
Many thanks to FSG and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

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.