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Contemporary Fiction Views: A novel about using nature and using people [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-06-20
Guerrilla gardening, extremely earnest young women and a charismatic billionaire with more than one plan gather to tell the story of Birnam Wood, the follow-up novel to Eleanor Catton's stunning Booker winner, The Luminaries.
Birnam Wood begins slowly, rambling along as it delves deep into the thoughts of Mira and Shelley. Shelley has been left at home in their New Zealand city while Mira goes rambling about. She was an early member of the collective Birnam Wood, which creates edible gardens on abandoned or neglected bits of land. Mira is the driving force of the group, literally a force of nature. Her intensity is getting to be too much for Shelley. She plans to leave her roomie, and the collective.
While Mira is out, a man from the past shows up unexpectedly. Mira and Tony had a history. Then he left town. No one knew he was coming back. When he appears at their flat, Shelley decides she can take over where Mira left off and that will give her a good excuse to leave.
All of this takes pages and pages, with every nuance of what both women are thinking and feeling described in sentence after sentence of detail. While interesting as a way to dissect characters, the technique doesn't seem to get the narrative rolling. However, the technique provides loads of nutrients for the story to grow, just as a well-fertilized garden produces a higher yield.
Appropriately enough for a novel concerned with taking care of the environment and natural resources, nature gets involved. A series of earthquakes closes a mountain pass that is the only way to get into Thorndike, a small town that borders on a national park. Left unattended is a huge estate, which Mira sees as a grand opportunity to do some gardening on a grand scale. Mira has snuck onto the property and has begun the work while Shelley wonders how to restart her own life.
Mira's activities are not undetected. An American billionaire, Robert Lemoine, has put in an offer on the Thorndike property to conduct an undercover mining operation that could rake in billions. Lemoine agrees to let Birnam Wood camp out and plant away. He even offers to pour money into the group.
Pouring money into other people is something that Lemoine does on a regular basis. He told Sir Owen Darvish, newly minted aristocrat, that he wants to build a survivor bunker on the property. He also puts money into one of Sir Owen's apparent conservationist interests. It may even be what earned Sir Owen his recent title.
Meanwhile, Tony has parted ways with Birnam Wood upon his return. He lectured the group about the ethics of accepting money from Lemoine and thinking they could work with him. As an aspiring freelance journalist, however, Tony knows this could be quite a scoop. He follows the group to spy on them and whatever is going on at Thorndike.
Turns out, a lot goes on. When the novel reaches this point, Catton merges the narrative with the ideas first introduced in examining the main characters. The belief in what is right versus the power of money, and what power can accomplish, take on each other in the actions of the characters.
The ending is not what would be expected from a novel that begins with two young women committed to guerrilla gardening. Even as a reader may hope for the best outcome, it will be necessary to question how good an outcome could possibly be.
Just as the stakes are high in what happens in the novel, so are the stakes in the real world. Do we want rogue billionaires in control? If not, how to right that? Do we want people to have affordable, fresh, healthy food? Do we want urban spaces used to the best advantage of communities? If so, how to make this happen?
On the individual character level, how do people who care show that they do? How well can anyone know another person? And, how can that knowledge be a positive factor in a relationship? Or is it fated to more likely be an instrument of manipulating someone else?
Birnam Wood is a vast, creative landscape that provides space to consider these ideas.
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