Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton-a review

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date March 7, 2023

Birnam Wood is on the move . . .

Five years ago, Mira Bunting founded a guerrilla gardening group: Birnam Wood. An undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic gathering of friends, this activist collective plants crops wherever no one will notice: on the sides of roads, in forgotten parks, and neglected backyards. For years, the group has struggled to break even. Then Mira stumbles on an answer, a way to finally set the group up for the long term: a landslide has closed the Korowai Pass, cutting off the town of Thorndike. Natural disaster has created an opportunity, a sizable farm seemingly abandoned.

But Mira is not the only one interested in Thorndike. Robert Lemoine, the enigmatic American billionaire, has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker–or so he tells Mira when he catches her on the property. Intrigued by Mira, Birnam Wood, and their entrepreneurial spirit, he suggests they work this land. But can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other?

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REVIEW:BIRNAM WOOD by Eleanor Catton is a contemporary, adult, stand alone psychological thriller focusing on a New Zealand collective calling themselves Birnam Wood, a co-op, a commune of hippie-style thirty-somethings who illegally plant sustainable, organic gardens in neglected spaces, and off-road areas for personal use and to share/sell to the otherwise unaware.

Told from third person perspective BIRNAM WOOD follows Mira Bunting, the so-called leader of the Birnam Wood gardening collective, and a woman who is struggling to keep the collective afloat. In the wake of a landslide that all but wiped out a major thoroughfare and pass, Mira goes in search of some property to confiscate for Birnam Wood, property owned by the recently knighted Sir Owen Darvish but has apparently been sold to American billionaire/ widower Robert Lemoine. All does not appear as it should be when one of their own, amateur journalist Tony Gallo, begins to question the who, how and why but Mira’s only concern is the ‘free land’, and the ability to equally grow crops. As Robert Lemoine’s intentions become clear to Tony, Mira and her friend Shelley are at an impasse, finding themselves in an impossible situation, a situation of which they no longer have any control. People will die, secrets revealed show collusions and conspiracies meant to deceive.

BIRNAM WOOD begins extremely slow and exceptionally dry as the author begins to build a foundation for her story line premise. The first twenty to twenty-five percent reads like a study in sociology; a social psychology experiment ; a cautionary tale of capitalism and consumerism, rich and poor, ecology and greed, murder, power and control. The character driven premise is dramatic, twisted, haunting and tragic; the characters are desperate, idealistic and challenging.

Copy supplied by Netgalley

Reviewed by Sandy