Birnam Wood

Opening the Pores on Activism

What makes a book compelling? Join me in reading good books and honing the craft of writing.

Trying new books can be like fishing. Many casts, few connections, while all we want is nothing more than to see the floating cork bobbing a bit and then vanishing with nary a sound, feel the rod subsequently bend and the line sing out under the drag. Just like the fish, we’re hooked on the experience.

I picked up Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton not expecting much. The jacket copy contained repellants: shades of environmentalism (I’d rather enjoy the waters and the trees than read about them), Shakespearean drama, Austenian in wit. In other words, musty British lit masquerading as indoctrinating agendas. It also had attractants: New Zealand’s South Island (which I long to visit), environmental group struggling financially (they’re like everyone else), and the title Birnam Wood which promised beautiful scenes.

I picked it up, ready to toss aside if it didn’t hook me.

The group calls itself Birnam Wood, taken from MacBeth, and cluing us into their lofty ambitions to save the planet, one New Zealand island at a time. It’s the kind of group who would call you out for using plastic straws in public. Mira is the founder and driver, Shelley, her second. The story opens with Mira reading a news item about a farm in the mountains being taken off the market due to a landslide closing the nearby pass, isolating the farm, and reducing its value. Mira smells a rat, as the owner wanted to develop the farm into housing lots. She discovers the farm is owned by someone who made their living in pest control, which clashes with Birnam Wood’s founding principles. It’s what any struggling group needs, a cause to rally against, and she pursues it.

Shelley, Mira’s second, is on the cusp of quitting after putting in too many years of low pay, dumpster diving for recycling (for their own needs), of being trodden on by Mira, of the lack of respect from her family. If only she could muster the courage to tell Mira she wants to quit.

Birnam Wood has its own internal problems, its own failures. Along comes Tony, a former member who left New Zealand a few years back and has returned to his childhood house, sleeping in his childhood bed, not having advanced his life particularly far. Tony is drawn back to the group by its causes and his romantic interest in Mira, hoping to pick up where they left off. Ready-to-quit Shelley sees an opportunity in Tony:

 . . . A solution had occurred to her, an exit strategy so clean and absolute it was almost bloodless. She would sleep with Tony, and confess what she had done to Mira, and Mira would not be able to forgive her. There would be no need for any confrontation, no need for apologies and tearful explanations and long arguments late into the night. There would be nothing to say. There would be only the fact of her betrayal, which Mira would not be able to forgive; and whether Shelley would then leave Birnam Wood of her own volition or because Mira demanded it would scarcely matter. She would sleep with Tony, and after that, leaving would not be something she was asking for, but something she had already done.

Tony adds much more to the internal mix of the group. Having been away for a few years, having missed much of the hard work and struggles the group endured, he’s fresh and urging everyone to stay true to the group’s aims. Which clashes with Mira’s new plan to bring in gobs of money but only if the group gets into bed with a monied American, who has his own hidden agenda for working with an environmental group.  

Her writing weighted on expanses of narration, less on action and dialogue (she uses section breaks and point-of-view changes in lieu of chapters), Catton gives us believable causes and effects as well as glimpses of the inner workings of activists, both fresh and exhausted. Well worth reading no matter which side of the environmental chasm you stand. Even if out amongst the woods.

Several readers are in the UK. I envy you because it’s where Catton now lives. If you ever have your picture taken with Catton, please send me a copy.

All the Best,

Geoff

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