Name: Birnam Wood
Rating: 4.041666666666667 (42 reviews)
ISBN: 9781250321718

Eleanor Catton

A Novel

Birnam Wood

Lindsay

There were none so blind as those who had already decided what it was they saw.

The real choices that you make in your life, the really difficult, defining choices, are never between what's right and what's easy. They're between what's wrong and what's hard.

Alawander Bouston 

Even a fucking acid trip has to be a means to an end. It has to be about team-building. It has to be about trust and wellness and creativity. It has to be about your authentic journey towards physical and psychological perfection. It has to be about you asserting the integrity of your choice to do it in the first place. It can’t be a lapse of judgment.

FROM THE WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 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? A gripping psychological thriller from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries, Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its wit, drama and immersion in character. A brilliantly constructed consideration of intentions, actions, and consequences, it is an unflinching examination of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.

Very good. An NZ-based “eco-thriller”. And a warning that capitalism can never be friendly. 

Jan Jackson

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER & NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER

"Birnam Wood is terrific. As a multilayered, character-driven thriller, it's as good as it gets. Ruth Rendell would have loved it. A beautifully textured work--what a treat." --Stephen King
​
"A generational cri de coeur . . . A sophisticated page-turner . . . Birnam Wood nearly made me laugh with pleasure. The whole thing crackles . . . Greta Gerwig could film this novel, but so could Quentin Tarantino." --Dwight Garner, The New York Times

The Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries brings us Birnam Wood, a gripping thriller of high drama and kaleidoscopic insight into what drives us to survive.

Birnam Wood is on the move . . .

A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand's South Island, cutting oﬀ the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last.
But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the place: he has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker, or so he tells Birnam's founder, Mira, when he catches her on the property. He's intrigued by Mira, and by Birnam Wood; although they're poles apart politically, it seems Lemoine and the group might have enemies in common. But can Birnam trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust one another?
A gripping psychological thriller from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton's Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its drama, Austenian in its wit, and, like both inﬂuences, fascinated by what makes us who we are. A brilliantly constructed study of intentions, actions, and consequences, it is a mesmerizing, unﬂinching consideration of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.

My fiancé bought this book for me on a small walk to the Harvard bookstore from our apartment one winter and I have never felt more seen. This book is WILDLY specific- environmental thriller, guérilla gardening meets commodification of forested, protected, indigenous land. This book was amazing to me because it combines all of my interests but perhaps that’s because we don’t constantly face environmental politic in middle class fancy America as opposed to New Zealand. Loved it. Kinda lame-o characters / world building but the plot was so fun and I have vivid memories of what my version of this landscape looked like. 

Lily Dendy

Rebecca Bream

It started slow but midway through I was very locked in and it became a page turner. I will say the lead up to the ending and the ending wasn’t my favorite, it didn’t feel very resolved.

Patty Pforte

Chris Dailey

Social commentary meets a who dunnit is this page turner set in New Zealand. A radical environmental collective finds itself in the middle of high stakes intrigue and snowballs into a complete disaster for all involved. Focused on a radical that hates admin work and a narcissistic billionaire among others, the novel centers on the surveillance state, extreme wealth, phoniness, imposter syndrome, toxic relationships and, simply, what makes people tick. It's fast paced while still being well-written, though it can be almost too focused on moving the plot, it was hard to put down.

Enjoyed the writing. The story was not epic. 

Gordon McArthur

hessensitive

Madi

I recommend this book but I do not endorse it. Very impressed

Margo Koss

Birnam Wood surprised me at every page. This was the first book I’ve ever read by Catton and I enjoyed her mix of internal dialogue and how a little verbal dialogue would be enough to set the plot. 

Ali Angco

If there's anyone adept at a certain narrative omniscience, where the overall effect is that you're a drone silently floating above New Zealand, flitting from character to character, it's Eleanor Catton. I truly enjoyed every moment of this.

Birnam Wood A Novel

Reviews

Highlights