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Hello, I think you'll be excited about our May selection for the Virtual Book Club...a riveting new novel from a Booker Prize-winning author that probes major issues in our world: Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton! We will discuss this recent bestseller on Thursday, May 2nd at 6pm Eastern Time.
A New Zealander, Eleanor Catton burst onto the international scene with her second novel, The Luminaries, which won the 2013 Booker Prize, making Catton the youngest author to win the prize at 28. In addition to her literary work, she is also a prolific screenwriter whose work includes the acclaimed 2020 film version of Emma, an adaptation of Jane Austen's novel.
Birnam Wood is Catton’s third novel and appeared in February 2023. As many of you may have recognized, it takes its title from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, when Macbeth is told in a vision that he "shall never vanquished be, until / Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill / Shall come against him." When I think of Birnam Wood, the first word that comes to mind is plot: as a recent piece in the New Yorker put it, Catton wants plot to “matter again.” In her own words, “the moral development of people in plotted novels where people make choices is fascinating and important. I’d like to see more books like that.” The narrative arc of Birnam Wood encompasses a dazzling array of concerns: youthful idealism, environmental activism, eco-terrorism, and billionaire excess, to name a few. The story centers on the conflicts (and occasional alliances) between Robert Lemoine, a wealthy American entrepreneur, and a group of young environmentalists in New Zealand, in a world of hyper-surveillance and technological innovation that often comes at a considerable human cost. Catton develops her complex storylines with a remarkable ear for dialogue and sharp, often acerbic humor. Risks are everywhere in this fictional world, and the strong are quick to prey on the weak. As we see in the following description of Mira, a leader of a radical environmentalist group, Catton’s characters tend to see the world as a zero sum “us against them” scenario:
Like all self-mythologising rebels, Mira preferred enemies to rivals, and often turned her rivals into enemies, the better to disdain them as secret agents of the status quo. But because this was not a conscious habit, she experienced only a vague feeling of righteous defiance as, unable to dismiss Owen Darvish, she told herself instead that she disliked him.
You can learn more about Catton in this interview and this review of Birnam Wood. I've included a Reader's Guide to help you get inside the novel. And you can help support independent booksellers by purchasing Birnam Wood directly from the VBC Bookshop at Bookshop.org (just click the icon for the novel under "Virtual Book of the Month").
Buona lettura / happy reading!
Joseph
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