Birnam Wood

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.