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A review by justabean_reads
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
This was on the Giller shortlist, and one of my friends raved it up, so I thought I'd give it a look in, but alas.
The basic idea is that a guerilla gardening group sets up shop on an "abandoned" property in rural New Zealand, only to find out an American tech billionaire is already there for mysterious reasons, the property owners are growing suspicious, and a wannabe journalist is poking around the margins. (I'm pretty sure I went to college with both the entire gardening collective and the wannabe journalist.) It seemed like something I'd like: a groups with disparate interests coming into contact in an isolated setting, everyone having to compromise their ideals while the stakes rise, but it never really gelled as that, or as anything else.
The point of view was bordering on omniscient third, but mostly flitted from mind to mind of six or seven major characters, and kept getting distracted by long backstory interludes, while meanwhile the plot tried to ratchet up tension as it gestured at being a political thriller. Unfortunately, that is not a happy blend. I also didn't find the character studies were as insightful as they wanted to be, and got tired of them pretty quickly. It ended up with the characters being over-explained to the point of not feeling all that real, the billionaire especially got a long origin story that didn't make sense and about which I didn't care.
The thesis of the novel seemed to be that everyone had this thriller narrative in their head, casting themselves as the hero (we know this because the book tells us repeatedly), but given that they were mutually exclusive, a dismal compromised ending had to come of it. There was a lot of clash between how people see themselves and how they behave, and extended commentary on the failure modes of different types of idealism. I liked the general idea of it, and kept reading to see what happened, but it always felt a bit contrived rather than an extension of the characters' flaws.
I'm never sure how to describe the difference between coming off as over-engineered versus neatly put together, but this was on the wrong side of that line for me. A lot of people loved this book, so it may be an issue of me just not getting it.
The basic idea is that a guerilla gardening group sets up shop on an "abandoned" property in rural New Zealand, only to find out an American tech billionaire is already there for mysterious reasons, the property owners are growing suspicious, and a wannabe journalist is poking around the margins. (I'm pretty sure I went to college with both the entire gardening collective and the wannabe journalist.) It seemed like something I'd like: a groups with disparate interests coming into contact in an isolated setting, everyone having to compromise their ideals while the stakes rise, but it never really gelled as that, or as anything else.
The point of view was bordering on omniscient third, but mostly flitted from mind to mind of six or seven major characters, and kept getting distracted by long backstory interludes, while meanwhile the plot tried to ratchet up tension as it gestured at being a political thriller. Unfortunately, that is not a happy blend. I also didn't find the character studies were as insightful as they wanted to be, and got tired of them pretty quickly. It ended up with the characters being over-explained to the point of not feeling all that real, the billionaire especially got a long origin story that didn't make sense and about which I didn't care.
The thesis of the novel seemed to be that everyone had this thriller narrative in their head, casting themselves as the hero (we know this because the book tells us repeatedly), but given that they were mutually exclusive, a dismal compromised ending had to come of it. There was a lot of clash between how people see themselves and how they behave, and extended commentary on the failure modes of different types of idealism. I liked the general idea of it, and kept reading to see what happened, but it always felt a bit contrived rather than an extension of the characters' flaws.
I'm never sure how to describe the difference between coming off as over-engineered versus neatly put together, but this was on the wrong side of that line for me. A lot of people loved this book, so it may be an issue of me just not getting it.