NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

The Forest of Birnam, by the New Zealand author Eleanor Catton, is a satirical novel that beautifully captures the clash between the young activist Mira Bunting, founder of the anarchistic ecological collective Birnam Wood, and the cunning American billionaire Robert Lemoine. The novel slowly builds up to a brilliant and audacious climax, offering more than just a simple clash between an eco-activists and a billionaire. The tragic narrative contains an ideological layer, exploring themes such as the pursuit of ideological purity, the ecological crisis, the rise of corporate power and capitalism itself. Additionally, Catton proves to be a masterful storyteller, crafting beautiful and intricate sentences filled with meticulous detail. The Forest of Birnam is not only a fresh and original novel but also showcases delightful characters and a dark, ironic, dramatic, and simply brilliant narrative. (Openbare Bibliotheek Brugghe) Birnam Wood places the global climate emergency’s key concerns and players into a microcosmic South Island setting in this wildly accomplished ride of a read that opens with a landslide and ends in a rush of sturm und drang. Catton dives deeply into each characters’ psyche then zoom outs to show us their decisions and interactions playing out in real time on the stage of a sought-after rural property bordering a protected national park. From a technocrat billionaire with devious plans and surveillance drones, to the government-endorsed and green-washing landowners resting on easily won laurels and the desperate debates on what the liberal left should be doing – no one is spared Catton’s sharp pen and eye in this no-holds-barred novel where ideals and morals butt up against personal ambition. (Auckland Council Libraries)