Birnam Wood – Eleanor Catton

READ FOR NZ BOOK AWARDS

A guerilla gardening group and an immigrant billionaire are both using beautiful New Zealand land illegally. Unsurprisingly they discover one another and clash but when trouble strikes there is benefit in them colluding. A political and eco thriller about greed and corruption, influenced by Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

Every little thing now has to be about maximising your potential, and perfecting yourself, and honing yourself, and getting the best deal out of your life, and out of your body, and out of your precious fucking time. Everything’s a corporate retreat now. Everything has utility. 

● After not having much success with understanding The Rehearsal nor finishing The Luminaries, I didn’t hold out much hope for Birnam Wood. Therefore I was pleasantly surprised with its readability and humming storyline. Knowing what I do about the author, I’m 100% sure that in enjoying the wonderful twists and turns of the storyline I have missed some very poignant and intelligent points. I am not bothered by this, because on face value Birnam Wood is a bloody rollicking read and at times even got into the unputdownable category. – Suzy

● Birnam Wood is a good read for a read’s sake. It’s fast-paced and action packed, with interesting well-rounded characters, (who sometimes appear as caricatures but the clever Catton doesn’t do anything unintentionally). There’s corruption and greed and murder. There’s a look at class differences and ecological and environmental topics. It is a page turner and I read this quite quickly. This doesn’t mean it doesn’t have faults though. It is somewhat preachy – billionaires bad, left-wing radicals good, NZers anti-intellectualism – but in the end no one is spared the barb of Catton’s sharp tongue. I found it disappointing that for a New Zealand book there wasn’t any inclusion of Māori characters or culture, especially when the book is about the importance of turangawaewae. – Rachel

Published 2023
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
432 pages