Birnam Wood is terrific. As a multilayered, character-driven thriller, it’s as good as it gets. Ruth Rendell would have loved it. A beautifully textured work―what a treat.” ―Stephen King
“One of the finest writers of our time.” ―Jonathan Ruppin, The Independent
The Booker Prize–winning author of The Luminaries brings us Birnam Wood, a gripping thriller of high drama and kaleidoscopic insight into what drives us to survive.
Birnam Wood is on the move . . .
A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last.
But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the place: he has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker, or so he tells Birnam’s founder, Mira, when he catches her on the property. He’s intrigued by Mira, and by Birnam Wood; although they’re poles apart politically, it seems Lemoine and the group might have enemies in common. But can Birnam trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust one another?
A gripping psychological thriller from the Booker Prize–winning author of The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its drama, Austenian in its wit, and, like both influences, fascinated by what makes us who we are. A brilliantly constructed study of intentions, actions, and consequences, it is a mesmerizing, unflinching consideration of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of March 2023:Smart, character driven, Birnam Wood has a little bit of everything: danger, intrigue, double-crossing, a scheming billionaire, and a utopic group hellbent on their mission. And I haven’t even mentioned the wannabe reporters, disillusioned security guards, and the sprawling farm where it all takes place. Eleanor Catton’s previous novel, The Luminaries won the Booker Prize nearly ten years ago, and the plot description of her latest is such a good reminder that a great book is more than the sum of its plot. It’s all about the relationship between characters—about their strife and struggles, hopes and dreams, contradictions and complexities. So, when you learn that Catton’s latest is about a rogue gardening group in New Zealand, don’t worry about dusting off your trowel. Just sit back and fall for the tightly bound story of a young group of environmental idealists whose mission collides and conjoins with a billionaire doomsday prepper. A pacey, impossible to put down book that made me so grateful to be a reader. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Editor
Review
A Must Read at The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, People, Vogue, Elle, Oprah Daily, Bloomberg, The Financial Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune, USA Today, BBC, The Guardian, The Times (London), Literary Hub, and more
“A grand, chilling thriller . . . that grips you by the throat until its final paragraph. Catton successfully scorches the earth with her prose . . . Spellbinding . . . Unforgettable.”
―Lauren LeBlanc, The Boston Globe
“An eco-thriller of grand psychological and social ambitions.”
―Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times
“Catton skewers the mores of our era in gorgeous language, cementing her reputation as a generational talent.”
―Oprah Daily
“Savagely satirical . . . Funny, provocative, and heartbreaking.”
―People
“Complex and often shocking . . . The biggest twist in Birnam Wood is the realization that every decision matters, though not in ways we could have anticipated.”
―B.D. McClay, The New Yorker
“[A] virtuoso performance: elaborately plotted, richly conceived, enormously readable.”
―Kevin Power, The Guardian
“Twisty and surprising, and Franzen-like in its rich character development and clear-eyed descriptions of social issues like cultural appropriation, class, wealth inequality, nature and the universal human desire to be liked.”
―Samantha Schoech, San Francisco Chronicle
“[Birnam Wood] will have you gnawing your knuckles.”
―Lisa Allardice, The Guardian
“Moral battles, compromises, and mysteries fill in the beating heart of this brilliant, clever book.”
―Lauren Puckett-Pope, Elle
“Birnam Wood is a multi-layered book . . . Catton is not just a master at spinning a web of competing philosophies, though; her characters are deeply flawed but you can’t help but root for them.”
―Chloe Schama, Vogue
“A hold-on-to-your-hat eco-thriller with big, juicy themes and morally conflicted characters who could be in the room with you . . . Brilliant.”
―Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Sunday Times (London)
“[Birnam Wood] so brilliantly and brutally changes our perception of what has gone before . . . A dark and brilliant novel about the violence and tawdriness of late capitalism.”
―Alex Preston, The Observer (London)
“Catton’s best book yet . . . Ingenious, intricate yet always lucid.”
―Claire Lowdon, The Times Literary Supplement (London)
“[Eleanor] Catton has come roaring back with a propulsive thriller . . . [She] is merciless to her characters and extremely generous to her readers, deploying buoyant, seemingly effortless prose.”
―James Tarny, Bloomberg
“[An] explosive story, mysterious and gripping from start to finish . . . deeply enjoyable, action-packed . . . But if there’s danger everywhere, there’s hope too ― and that’s a remarkable accomplishment.”
―Shahidha Bari, Financial Times
“A thoughtful, personality-rich page-turner.”
―Vanity Fair
“Persuasive and devastating.”
―Laura McLean-Ferris, 4Columns
“A stark and powerful indictment of the innumerable ways that we are undone, individually and collectively, by ambition . . . [Birnam Wood is] Shakespearian in its sound and fury.”
―Joshua Bartlett, Ploughshares
“As saturated with moral scrutiny and propulsive plotting as 19th-century greats; it’s a twisty thriller via Charles Dickens, only with drones . . . Readers will hold their breath until the last page . . . This blistering look at the horrors of late capitalism manages to also be a wildly fun read.”
―Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Sharp, sizzling . . . Birnam Wood is tightly wound and psychologically thrilling, and Catton’s fans and readers new to her powers will savor it to the end.”
―Booklist, starred review
“A tragic eco-thriller of betrayed ideals and compromised loyalties . . . [Catton] pulls a taut, suspenseful story from the tangle of vivid characters. Thanks to a convincing backdrop of ecological peril, Catton’s human drama is made even more acute.”
―Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Mysterious and marvelously unpredictable, Birnam Wood had me reading the way I used to as a kid―curiously, desperately, and as if it was the whole world. Eleanor Catton connects to the natural and unnatural ways in which we try to control our environments, our impulses, and one another. A spectacular novel, conjured by a virtuoso.”
―Rivka Galchen, author of Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch
“Phenomenal and utterly gripping, Birnam Wood has the sense of a literary writer setting herself free and having a bit of fun. It’s fantastic. I loved it.”
―Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist
“If George Eliot had written a thriller, it might have been a bit like this.”
―Francis Spufford, author of Light Perpetual
“A filmic and page-turning thriller. Hubris and ambition, vanity and greed, principle and expediency, courage and hope―all are here, but not necessarily where you expect to find them.”
―Carys Davies, author of The Mission House
About the Author
Eleanor Catton is the author of the international bestseller The Luminaries, winner of the Man Booker Prize and a Governor General’s Literary Award. Her debut novel, The Rehearsal, won the Betty Trask Award, was short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize, and was long-listed for the Orange Prize. She is also the screenwriter of Emma, a 2020 feature film adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel. Born in Canada and raised in New Zealand, she now lives in Cambridge, England.
Product details
- Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux (March 7, 2023)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 432 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0374110336
- ISBN-13 : 978-0374110338
- Item Weight : 1.4 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.5 x 1.4 x 9.3 inches
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