Choices that End Poorly

Birnam Wood 

by Eleanor Catton

“...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.”   ― Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood







Birnam Wood is a group of guerilla gardeners that Mira Bunting founded five years ago. Set in New Zealand, this activist collective, an unregistered, uncontrolled, occasionally criminal, occasionally charitable group of friends, plants crops wherever no one will see them: on the sides of roads, in abandoned parks, and in 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. A natural disaster has created an opportunity; a sizable farm is seemingly abandoned.

But Mira is not the only one interested in Thorndike. When he sees Mira on the property, mysterious American billionaire Robert Lemoine tells her that he has taken it to build his end-of-the-world bunker. Intrigued by Mira, Birnam Wood, and their entrepreneurial spirit, he suggests they work this land. But are they able to put their trust in him? Can they trust one another as their beliefs and ideals are put to the test?

A psychological thriller from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton's Birnam Wood, left me wondering if it was worth the time I took to read it. I was not surprised by the ending in general and found some of its main characters preditable. Neither the protagonist nor her antagonist were particularly believable. I barely found the story engaging enough to finish the novel. I cannot recommend this novel to any intelligent reader.

Byzantine in the Best Way

The Luminaries 
by Eleanor Catton



“There is a great deal of difference between keeping one’s own secret and keeping a secret for another soul; so much so that I wish we had two worlds, that is a word for a secret of one’s own making and a word for a secret that on did not make, and perhaps did not wish for, but has chosen to keep, all the same.” (p 788)




This is a complicated novel that rewards the reader who can stay the course. You know that a novel is going to have some complications when it begins with, not only a "Note to the Reader" about the use of "stellar and planetary positions" in the story, but there follows a "Character Chart" on the subsequent page. With twenty listed characters, twelve of whom are the "luminaries" mentioned in the first sentence of the opening chapter and one of whom is dead, you quickly perceive both the value of this chart and its importance for your sanity as a reader.

Needless to say, due to the complications of the plot I will not be able to recount all of the events that occur in the twelve parts into which the story is divided. No risk of any plot spoilers here. However some of the highlights of the story that were impressed on my memory include:  Five dresses filled with gold, more gold discovered in a dead hermit’s cottage, a lovely young prostitute who nearly overdosed on opium, questions about the ownership of a boat named the Godspeed, and the motivations of the dozen “luminaries” who have gathered together in the smoking room of a second-rate New Zealand hotel when the novel opens to discuss a few of these curiosities.

Catton's prose style is engaging, which helps when the first part is a mere 360 pages (and even this number is significant). The narration starts with one of the twelve, Thomas Balfour, but an omniscient narrator takes over to "impose a regimental order upon the impatient chronicle of the shipping agent’s roving mind". Thank goodness. Otherwise the novel might have run on for another 800 pages. The first part ends with a neat little summary of some of the high points so far and the remaining eleven parts gradually shorten so much that the final four parts average less than three pages each.

The various story lines do come together (I believe) and there are more notable events including an evil ship’s captain with a C-shaped scar, a brothel madam who conducts a seance, a blackmailed politician and a riveting courtroom scene, and a phantom aboard the Godspeed, “the dead man rising, his bloody throat, his cry,” that greets Walter Moody (whom we also met back on the first page) on his way to New Zealand. It is the New Zealand of 1865 and 1866 that is the setting for this novel that proves you do not have to cover a great many years to produce a long (830 pp) novel. It reminded me of Vikram Seth's skill in portraying about two years of Indian history over a span of more than 1400 pages in his delightful novel, A Suitable Boy.

Eleanor Catton succeeds in creating an historical mystery(s) with a byzantine plot that manages to entertain on almost every page. She was so successful that she was awarded the 2013 Mann Booker Prize;  a prize that usually goes to short, dense, self-consciously literary novels.  The entertainment was sufficient for this reader to recommend the book to all who enjoy big novels that are both complicated and satisfying.

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