Birnam Wood

By Eleanor Catton

Farrar, Strauss & Giroux     2023

432 pages     Literary

Where to start on the best book I have read this year? The setting? The South Island of New Zealand. The time frame? 2017. The cast? A group of environmental idealists called Birnam Wood and their primary members, Shelley and Mira. A would-be journalist named Tony. An American billionaire, Robert Lemoine, and a newly knighted businessman and his wife, Sir Owen and Lady Jill Darvish. The plot? OMG, the plot! The plot would be nothing without this cast of amazingly-written characters, each so important to the plot that it would be nothing if the reader hadn’t come to know the characters so intimately.

Mira and Shelley are the organizers and leaders of a gardening collective named Birnam Wood. The group’s purpose is to plant trees, plants and vegetables on unused or abandoned land on the South Island of New Zealand. Mira has heard about a huge farm close to a national park that has been abandoned because of a gigantic landslide and decides that this might be the next big project for Birnam Wood. Early in the plan, she comes in contact with the American techno billionaire, Robert Lemoine, who also has his eyes on the farmland, but for far different reasons. He realizes that Birnam Wood might be the perfect coverup for his nefarious plans, and he convinces Mira that he has just bought the farm from Sir Owen Darvish. He offers Mira considerable money to come and use the land for their environmental purposes. Mira and Shelley bring the group to the farm, and they settle in, ready to farm the land. A former member of the group, Tony, has a lot of questions about a collective taking so much money from an American billionaire, and he sees the potential for a major exposé that will guarantee him a journalism career. Sir Owen Darvish only has understood little bits and pieces about Lemoine’s plans for his family farm, and his wife, Jill, knows nothing. The set-up is complete, and the plot begins.

The story line would go nowhere without 21^st century technology, and the vast amount of knowledge that Lemoine uses to manipulate the scene with technology of all sorts. His money has come from his drone company, and he uses those drones to monitor everything that happens on the farm. He also is able to drop in on the group and manipulate their cell phones and laptops and on and on. In this way, he controls all the situations and people like puppets. One reviewer compared Lemoine to Elon Musk, and I had Musk’s image in my mind throughout the book. I was quite impressed that Catton understood the technology so well that she was able to use it so successfully in her plot.

This is an incredible book, extremely clever and innovative. The set-up is amazing, and when the plot really began to take off, I almost had to hold my breath, because I had become so entrenched with the characters that I knew that nothing good was going to happen to any of them. And I will say no more about plot.

I can’t say enough about Catton as an author. One reviewer said, “Catton has a profound command of how perceptions lead to choice, and of how choice for most of us, is an act of self-definition.” For instance, Shelley worries about why she has a constant sense of dread. “She was trying to escape it now, but she would never escape it, because she could not feel the difference, could not understand the difference, between running toward something, and running away.” All the characters are very clearly defined and identifiable without being caricatures. I can’t say that I identified with any of them, but I sure knew who they were.

I have been to the South Island of New Zealand, and I hoped that I might have been to the national park described in the book, but Catton mentioned in the afterword that all the locations were made up.  I became intrigued with the book when I read a terrific review in The New Yorker, and then remembered that I had been given access to a copy of the book from the publisher. I highly recommend Birnam Wood.

The New Yorker review.

The Brave

By James Bird

Feiwel & Friends     2020

311 pages     Middle Grade

The Brave is a brave, sober, loving book that was introduced to me by my sixth grade granddaughter, Adela. I bought the book at her request, and we will have a book discussion after she finishes. While it is realistic fiction, it has some aspects of magical realism.

Collin is a 12-year-old with an OCD problem that makes it difficult for him at school. He counts all the letters in the words that people say to him. When he responds, he begins with the number of letters. So if his teacher says, “Good morning, Collin.” He would respond : “17. Good morning,” No matter how hard he tries, he can’t stop counting, and the school kids can’t stop harassing him. When things become unbearable, his alcoholic father sends him across the country with his dog, Seven, to live with his mother, whom he has never met.

Cecilia, his mother, is Ojibwe and lives on the Fond du Lac reservation outside of Duluth MN. Wait! Duluth! My home town! I called Adela and said, “You didn’t tell me it takes place in Duluth.” Oh yeah” she responded, “I forgot.” Actually, the reservation is about 15 miles from town.  Of course, to me, that made the book all the more important.  As a kid growing up in Duluth, there were kids from the reservation in our school, but native culture was pretty much a given in the culture of Duluth.

The native culture takes a secondary role in the story line, except, perhaps, for the magic that seems to surround a new acquaintance, Orenda. Orenda lives mostly in a tree house next door to Collin’s mother and grandmother. She believes that she is turning into a butterfly as her body deteriorates from ALS. Her mother, who died of ALS, is a butterfly that visits her frequently. Orenda is an incredible character in the book, and the fact that her father built her a treehouse makes her all the more magical.

As Collin becomes her friend, she teaches him about strength and bravery, and the stronger he becomes, the easier it is for him to manage at school and control his counting obsession. His mother teaches him about the purity of love, and he finds himself growing into the person that he wants to become. He gains enough mastery over his life that when Orenda is dying. he is able to manage the pain and grief. Collin muses at one point: “I wish I could take her pain away. I’d happily feel it if it meant she would feel better, but I also know she would never let me. It’s hers. It’s part of her story.”

I tried to read the book through the eyes of my 11-year-old granddaughter. She definitely will have seen the depth of the crisis at hand, and is responding to the challenges of bullying and the joys of beautiful relationships. One reviewer complained that some of the natives were stereotypes. “Still we should be past stereotypes of stoic, wise Indians who speak little and are abnormally attached to the great outdoors.” These details were things I was looking for as I read, but I became so involved in the beauty of the story line and the relationships that I didn’t pay attention to potential stereotypes.

Before I began The Brave, I read that it was on several lists of best books of 2020, including School Library Journal, and the New York Public Library, so I was surprised when I read negative reviews in The New York Times, The Circle Newspaper, among others. They felt that the Native American experience wasn’t accurate enough. But, that’s wasn’t what I was reading the book for. I saw a young boy and a teenage girl struggling, finding, and becoming the butterflies that they were destined to become. In my opinion, The Brave was just that, brave and beautiful.

Just two small caveats: Orenda is constantly followed by butterflies, and the woods around their homes are filled with butterflies. Ah, butterflies have a very short season in northeastern Minnesota. Likely they aren’t there in the autumn and winter. Also, she feeds peaches to  the butterflies. Peaches don’t grow in Minnesota—too cold. Oh well, but it’s a beautiful illustration.

James Bird, the author of The Brave, is a filmmaker and author. He is of Ojibwe descent and went to school in Minnesota. He has a new book, No Place Like Home, coming out in August.