Book: Birnam Wood
Author: Eleanor Catton
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟 1/2
Completed this for the Popsugar Reading Challenge Prompt #1 (A book where gardening or a garden is central to the plot) and the 52 Book Club Reading Challenge Prompt #9 (featuring a natural disaster).
Korowai Pass, New Zealand.
A guerrilla gardening group called Birnam Wood led by ecological rebel Mira Bunting, sees an opportunity to move in, in the wake of a landslide.
However, there they encounter the mysterious Robert Lemoine, who takes an interest in what they do.
The question is – can they trust him?
This is described as a gripping literary thriller and to me, at least, gripping it was not.
The writing and characters are excellent but the story itself felt uneven.
There were parts of it I really liked and parts that dragged.
And then it ends rather abruptly.
It seemed to teeter between being a novel of ideas and a thriller, and so the result was a bit uneven.
That said, if you approach this as more literary fiction than contemporary – for its ideas more than its mystery – you may enjoy this more.
Birnam Wood asks questions about political orientation, what it means to be true to your convictions and what constitutes selling out.
This is particularly poignant when one looks at the far left – who often have to find ways to get their messages across within capitalist societies.
It has been on my shelf for quite a while so I am happy I did get around to it.
And I absolutely loved the idea of rebel gardeners, and as someone with no green thumb would have loved more of the gardening.
So I would say read it for the ideas and not the plot. It does make you think, and sometimes those stories are the ones that stay with you.
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