Birnam Wood
By Eleanor Catton
423 pages
What’s it about?
Mira and Shelley are long time eco-activists and part of a group (Birnam Wood) who find small plots of unused land and discreetly use it to produce fruits/vegetables for those in need. When their group gets caught up with a billionaire many conflicts arise.What did it make me think about?
New Zealand.Should I read it?
I read The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton and loved it years ago. I have been waiting for her second novel for a long time. Every time I read the jacket cover on this book I put it aside. It just sounded boring. It was NOT boring. This is a well-written, smart novel. However, my problem with it was that it had so many esoteric arguments that sometimes it made my head hurt and it slowed the plot down. It almost seemed to be trying to impress…. Well I still liked it and I still think Eleanor Catton is an amazing writer. So I recommend this one with reservations.Quote-
“Tony was very proud to be well-read, and had often railed against the defensive anti-intellectualism that defined his country’s culture, but he had nevertheless recognized in himself, at times, a deep desire to perform a kind of excessive rugged practicality in compensation for his bookishness, submitting himself to physical privations, testing his strength and his endurance well beyond what was called for, and devising circuitous home-made solutions to problems that could be solved much more easily, and often more cheaply, by paying someone else to fix them. It hadn’t been until he’d gone abroad that he’d been able to identify this trait as itself particularly Kiwi, reflecting a broader attitude held among his countrymen that to do a thing with effort was always more respectable than to have it done with ease; inconvenience, in New Zealand, tended to be treated as a test of character, such that it was a point of national pride to be able to withstand discomfort or poor service without giving in to the temptation to complain.”What’s it about?
Mira and Shelley are long time eco-activists and part of a group (Birnam Wood) who find small plots of unused land and discreetly use it to produce fruits/vegetables for those in need. When their group gets caught up with a billionaire many conflicts arise.
What did it make me think about?
New Zealand.
Should I read it?
I read The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton and loved it years ago. I have been waiting for her second novel for a long time. Every time I read the jacket cover on this book I put it aside. It just sounded boring. It was NOT boring. This is a well-written, smart novel. However, my problem with it was that it had so many esoteric arguments that sometimes it made my head hurt and it slowed the plot down. It almost seemed to be trying to impress…. Well I still liked it and I still think Eleanor Catton is an amazing writer. So I recommend this one with reservations.
Quote-
“Tony was very proud to be well-read, and had often railed against the defensive anti-intellectualism that defined his country’s culture, but he had nevertheless recognized in himself, at times, a deep desire to perform a kind of excessive rugged practicality in compensation for his bookishness, submitting himself to physical privations, testing his strength and his endurance well beyond what was called for, and devising circuitous home-made solutions to problems that could be solved much more easily, and often more cheaply, by paying someone else to fix them. It hadn’t been until he’d gone abroad that he’d been able to identify this trait as itself particularly Kiwi, reflecting a broader attitude held among his countrymen that to do a thing with effort was always more respectable than to have it done with ease; inconvenience, in New Zealand, tended to be treated as a test of character, such that it was a point of national pride to be able to withstand discomfort or poor service without giving in to the temptation to complain.”
