Birnam Wood

Birnam Wood

2023 • 432 pages

Ratings76

Average rating3.8

15

Literary ecological thriller following Birnam Wood, a gardening collective as they stumbled across a farm that could make their enterprise a real success, until they realise it is also zone of interest for a certain Robert Lemoine, a mysterious American billionaire. 

I really liked the themes in this book, about ecology, politics, capitalism, corruption, privilege, environment, etc 

The book felt very wordy as in no chapters and long sentence but the writing felt easy to read. 
This was a lot more political than I thought, and sometimes it felt too much, I think I would have preferred less dumps of political/social monologues/dialogues and more dispersed throughout the novel. 
Most of the characters had positive and negative sides (like a bit insufferable and a bit naive) so they were entertaining to read especially Robert Lemoine because he felt like a proper James Bond villain. 
Some of the other dialogues/descriptions felt too superfluous, so the pacing felt a bit off to me. 

I did like the plot, the different point of views showing each major events, the different twists and I literally gasped at the end of part 2 where shit really hit the fan. The last 30 pages were insane, especially the last 5 and I actually liked the ending the author went for. 

October 22, 2024