Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood proved more divisive in the Pocket Bookclub than I envisaged. I always read NZ fiction when visiting my in-laws ‘back home.’ On our Christmas visit, I bought The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey which proved a perfect holiday read for me. (I subsequently heard her speak at the Brisbane Writer’s Festival and will seek out more of her work).
Meanwhile, I brought Birnam Wood home with me. I had read Catton’s Man Booker Prize winning book, The Luminaries and know a little of the coast where it is set. I remember finding it less satisfying than I had hoped, but still, I thought Birnam Wood would suit the Pocket Bookclub. Also, a good excuse to serve some Peanut Slab and Lolly Cake
I don’t know why I left it to the last minute to read. Well, 6 days. And I do have to go to work, like every day! It is longish at 433 pages and I remembered The Luminaries as a slow read. I was worried I would not get through it in time. But to my surprise, I read Birnam Wood at the pace of a thriller. It is indeed a thriller.
(A good excuse to drink some good award-winning Papaiti gin from Whanganui)
As an aside, I have lived most of my adult life with my chosen Kiwi partner, and I also recognise a quintessential Kiwiness in character Tony’s musings.
…devising circuitous home-made solutions to problems that could be solved much more easily, and often more cheaply, by paying someone else to fix them. It hadn’t been until he’d gone abroad that he’d been able to identify this trait as itself peculiarly Kiwi…that to do a thing with effort was always more respectable than to have it done with ease, inconvenience…― Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood
I would describe Birnam Wood as an environmental thriller. Two worlds collide, the world of men with narcissistic entitlement and more money than it is possible to imagine versus the idealism of middle-class youth bent on changing the world one guerrilla garden at a time.
But why the Pocket Bookclub division? It is not often one person in the group ‘hates’ a book but this was the case for Birnam Wood. Why? They thought the megalomanic character was unbelievable and the political rants boring.
The villain of the book is Elon Musk. What a minute, no, his name is Robert Lemoine, an American who is up to no good in the New Zealand bush. For Lemoine, the ends absolutely justifies the means as long as it contributes to his already enormous bank balance. His lying, cheating, manipulating (that’s the nice stuff) is the spoke around which all the other characters turn. Essentially if you don’t believe in him, I can see it is difficult to buy into the rest of the book. I believe he could be real, I have seen Elon Musk in the news. (Not that I am accusing Elon of murder, lets be clear about that!). But if Lemoine’s evil is a bit cartoon caricature, I forgive Catton, because he is so deliciously evil.
Lemoine says he is building a apocalypse-proof super-bunker. (Spoiler, he is not!). On a mission, in the same bushland is ambitious journalist Tony, (responsible for most of the the political rants) who has just returned shamefully home from the big OS. His self absorbed drive to be a well respected, renowned journalist who breaks open political and environmental scandals leads him to stupid and dangerous decisions.
Meanwhile, Mira (Tony’s crush) and Shelley and their band of guerrilla gardeners calling themselves Birnam Wood have been invited – or as Tony would put it, bought out with blood money, to set up their gardens on the land where he is building his bunker. It is not really clear why Lemoine would pay them to do this, though Gods do like playthings.
“Like all self-mythologising rebels, Mira preferred enemies to rivals, and often turned her rivals into enemies, the better to disdain them as secret agents of the status quo.”
― Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood
Even the protagonists in Birnam Wood are barely likeable, and Catton cleverly riddles the plot and character conflicts will – well not so much misunderstandings – but layers of personality and limitations such that they barely understand themselves, let alone others, and are caroled like sheep into the tragedy that unfolds. The ending. I wish I could talk to you about the ending. You are hurled toward the ending with an optimism of good triumphing over evil and you will never be the same again.
“But didn’t you say the acid is kind of like business too?’ Shelley said. ‘You said it’s like a bonding exercise.’ ‘Yes – I’m afraid that’s a bit of a Silicon Valley cliché,’ Lemoine said, with another wink at Mira. ‘But it can be an amazing tool. I think of it a bit like how fifty years ago the cigarettes were on the shelves and the condoms were behind the counter, and now it’s the other way around. It’ll be that way with psychedelics and alcohol, I’m sure. It’ll flip.”
― Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood
Lastly, I want to say, this book has NO chapters. Very disconcerting when you think you will just read until the end of the chapter and then go to sleep. Maybe that is why I managed the read the whole thing in 6 days.
The Pocket Bookclub raged against a book of literary cocktails that only included quotes from men. We embarked on a cunttail project, inventing a cunttail for every book we read in 2022. We made a literary cunttail book! What’s wrong with the word cunt? Nothing
Literary Cunttails 2022 is hand-drawn by Miriama and includes every recipe. Get a free copy.