Birnam Wood

Wow, just wow. This totally packed a punch I didn't see coming in the first 3/4. The ending ramped it from a 4 star to a 5 star read.

Birnam Wood are a group of guerilla activist gardeners in Christchurch who as well as planting legitimate crops in people's spare ground and harvesting and selling the produce, cultivate hidden spaces in abandoned lots. They're pretty small fry but founder Mira has her eyes set on bigger things, namely a large farm in Thorndike, bordering the Korowai National Park. The farm is owned by the newly knighted Sir Owen Darvish a pest controller with aspirations of grandeur and his wife Jill who inherited the property from her parents. However, since a landslide has created a dead end not far beyond the Darvish farm, essentially ruining the economy of Thorndike, the couple has moved to Wellington and Mira sees the land as claimable.

When she arrives at the farm though, billionaire American businessman Robert Lemoine is already there, having secretly offered to buy the property from the Darvishes to allow access to the rare metals in the neighbouring National Park, something he could never get through legitimate channels.

Lemoine, seeing in Mira a fellow opportunist decides to woo Birnam Wood with money and fame, and the game between the two is afoot.

There's so much going on in this book - relationships, between Owen and Jill, Mira and her colleague Shelley, and between idealistic and determined free lance writer Tony and the collective. Tony thinks Lemoine is hiding something, and if he can prove it, it'll be the biggest break of his career. I also enjoyed the subtle dark humour, especially when things get misinterpreted, misunderstood or lost in translation.

But the real gem in Birnam Wood is the last 1/4 of the book, where all the parts of the story come together for a totally unexpected and brilliantly crafted ending.

Birnam Wood has been described as a thriller, but I think it might be more accurate to call it a tragedy in the old fashioned literary sense.

There are some great things in this book, especially the development of the main characters. I loved the ambivalent relationship between Mira and Shelley, which is the center of the novel. There is obviously friendship chemistry between them, but there is also offhanded contempt and resentment to complicate it. From the beginning I had more sympathy for Shelley, but I was rooting for them to work it out by the end of the novel.

The dynamics of the environmental activist group Birnam Wood would be recognizable to anyone who has been involved in similar endeavors. Mira and Shelley's relationship fits so well into the tensions between remaining true to principles and the drudgery of sustaining activism when you're always on the edge of flaming out. When Tony, a former Birnam Wood member who has been away for a few years, arrives back on the scene just as Mira announces that the billionaire Robert Lemoine is offering to fund them, those tensions boil up into an argument about whether the group can stay true to itself if it takes the money.

There are discussions about various aspects of that question throughout the book: what are the things you just wouldn't do, no matter what? How important is it to be authentic, versus doing what is expected of you? Is it better to say "sorry" or to thank someone for their patience, forbearance, etc?

The characters are struggling with self awareness, how to be in relationship with each other (even if they've been married for decades), and how to hold true to their own visions of how things should be.

We learn early on that Robert Lemoine has no scruples about being authentic or having a relationship with another person, and my question as I read the book was whether any of these normal human characters would be able to hold onto themselves as they encountered him.

I really hated the ending. It seemed like such a waste of all that character development to have everyone die. The only way I could make sense of it is to think of this story as a tragedy, where character flaws (of the kind that are discussed throughout) lead people to not be able to do what they should do. I'd be interested in what others think about this.

It's a plotty thriller where a guerrilla eco-collective named Birnam Wood comes into contact with a moustache-twirling American billionaire with plans inside of plans. This in itself is interesting if not improbable. Our current spate of billionaires hardly seem capable of Lex Luthor levels of nefarious intent as they'd rather fly into space, dive into the depths, or square off in a cage match (or dick measuring contest for that matter)

I digress.

I found I could care less about the twists and turns the story took, even as the stakes kept getting raised. Even Catton feels disinterested in resolving anything and just ends the book. The collision of eco-idealism into rapacious greed is certainly interesting, but I'd rather read Catton exploring the inner lives of working stiffs surmounting their mundane day to day challenges.

Mira and Shelley are wrestling with what they are to each other as the co-founders of Birnam Wood. Shelley is tired of always feeling the bridesmaid, the ride-along, and is poking at the idea of leaving the collective and wrestling with how to break the news. Mira feels the tension and is trying to untangle her own motivations. I know it sounds navel gazing and tedious but I found it beautifully articulated. The scene where the Darvish's have company is a master class in all the unsaid things people navigate during a growing tedious, but familiar dinner with old friends. And I loved the juxtaposition of Tony Gallo's fiery, mansplaining, anti-capitalist screed levelled against Birnam Wood, contrasted against his almost giddy imaginings of uncovering a massive conspiracy.

These are just incredible character studies and Catton only falters with the billionaire Lemoine who is all action with little interiority. He is a shark, ever moving, ever planning — free from the plague of self-doubt or the need to examine his own motivations. He just there to move the plot along. As the story progresses, everyone is increasingly enmeshed in that swirl of action and there's less and less self-examination. The book is poorer for that lack.

Give me more of Catton perfectly encapsulating a nuanced and fully realized character with just the stray thoughts in their head. Hypnotizing.