Book Review: Birnham Wood. By Eleanor Catton (pictured – credit the Scotsman)
A bit like digging a new vegetable patch in heavy clay soil, Eleanor Catton’s New Zealand novel Birnham Wood is hard work until one of the leading characters is accidentally run over and killed. The death begins the unravelling of the work of the billionaire villain Robert Lemoine who is intent on fooling the naïve women of a gardening collective by using them as cover for his plans to illegally mine minerals in a National Park. To get to the untimely and unlikely death (spoiler alert) of Sir Owen setting up the fast-moving action of the last third of the ‘environmental thriller’ (as her publisher calls it) Catton meticulously sets up a complex plot, sub plots and fleshes out her characters almost to the point of boredom.
At the heart of the story is the way the protagonist and charmer Lemoine, manipulates the two women who are the driving force behind the guerrilla gardeners. He charms and tricks them into being fooled into giving his plans the cover he needs to build his illegal mining operation. That in itself is disappointing as there are numerous moments when normally cynical horticulturists would say – ‘hey, we’re being conned.’ But then we wouldn’t have the story. It’s left to tetchy Tony and Mira’s former wannabe boyfriend to smell a rat and begin investigating Lemoine’s plans.
In drama there is a rule that you ‘show, don’t tell’ meaning allow the audience to see what’s going on through actions rather than telling them in detail. Catton at times tells us everything a character is up to from whether they need to fill up their car with fuel, download a file, make a call, charge their phone or have a bite to eat. It bogs down the narrative even when finally, the pace picks up as Tony begins his attempts to discover what Lemoine is really up to in the National Park. That kind of detail does inform readers of the alarming level of surveillance that billionaires can deploy in order to see their dreams come true. Including an invasion of personal freedoms, corruption and the manipulation of the truth – ala Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and company. But it can also be irritating and unnecessary and needed an editor to eradicate the repetition.
I’ve seen reviews gamely attempting to liken the characters to those of Shakepeare’s Macbeth but there is little in common with the Jacobean thriller other than the title. Like Shakespeare’s tragedy Catton’s novel is ultimately also a tragedy but unlike the fast-moving story of Macbeth you just wish the plot would move quicker in Birnham Wood, be less dense and like digging up clay soil in an allotment – was not such hard work.
Harry Mottram
Birnham Wood was first published in 2023 by Granta.
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