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hazel_alexandra 's review for:
Birnam Wood
by Eleanor Catton
When I first started reading this, I thought "sure, the writing's pretty good, and the ecological political tirades the characters go off on are interesting, and yeah, I can see how themes from Macbeth take shape in this narrative, but well... It's all a bit much, isn't it?"
Let me explain. You read about Shelley and Mira and the complex boundaries of their friendship and the contradictions that make them tick, you're grounded in the sense this might be a character study and then - in comes the POV of a laughably evil, we're-talking-about-to-maniacally-twirl-a-moustache, villain of a billionaire (villionaire?) whose first and indeed only resort seems to be murdering people, or instantly hacking into their phones and retrieving every piece of information about their lives, who seems to role-play at being human - it's fairly over the top. It's actually quite fun (once you get into it)! It's a thriller now (like, a middle of the road streaming service original, but has a surprisingly good cast)! Everyone has mummy issues! It's still very 'psychological drama' but ramps up into more of a Victorian-era melodrama (given how the characters speak).
I did catch myself kind of skimming over Tony's brief interludes. The relatively more 'action scene' nature of what he was doing just didn't interest me and mainly, I just didn't like him much as a character (that's not to say he was boring, or badly written. A character can be unlikeable and maybe gasp that's the author's intent. Or maybe it isn't, but that doesn't mean it's bad.) His POV didn't really add much, past a certain point. We knew exactly what it was he was finding out before he did himself, and really I guess the point of his revelations was to set up someone to reveal the evidence of wrongdoing at the end. I liked Mira, who seemed to parallel Macbeth as her values are compromised (Shelley as Lady Macbeth, undone by her treachery? Or is that Lemoines? Or the argument that everyone represents Macbeth, a little bit, with their differing ambitions for power?) The plot is well paced; slow, but effectively so, the narrative shifts framed by the different POVs explore our character's motivations and ideology, and the only other thing that took me out of the story were the early aforementioned political rants characters go on, which at times can feel more like speeches for a theatrical piece as they don't really feel like conversations, and a reader can feel easily put off not necessarily by their content, but by their length and the number we have to read before the plot starts really happening.
I have no real knowledge of the New Zealand political climate in the 2010s so unfortunately a lot of the satire/criticism/references to real events definitely went over my head.
I expected a different kind of novel, but I wasn't disappointed with what this turned out to be instead.
Let me explain. You read about Shelley and Mira and the complex boundaries of their friendship and the contradictions that make them tick, you're grounded in the sense this might be a character study and then - in comes the POV of a laughably evil, we're-talking-about-to-maniacally-twirl-a-moustache, villain of a billionaire (villionaire?) whose first and indeed only resort seems to be murdering people, or instantly hacking into their phones and retrieving every piece of information about their lives, who seems to role-play at being human - it's fairly over the top. It's actually quite fun (once you get into it)! It's a thriller now (like, a middle of the road streaming service original, but has a surprisingly good cast)! Everyone has mummy issues! It's still very 'psychological drama' but ramps up into more of a Victorian-era melodrama (given how the characters speak).
I did catch myself kind of skimming over Tony's brief interludes. The relatively more 'action scene' nature of what he was doing just didn't interest me and mainly, I just didn't like him much as a character (that's not to say he was boring, or badly written. A character can be unlikeable and maybe gasp that's the author's intent. Or maybe it isn't, but that doesn't mean it's bad.) His POV didn't really add much, past a certain point. We knew exactly what it was he was finding out before he did himself, and really I guess the point of his revelations was to set up someone to reveal the evidence of wrongdoing at the end. I liked Mira, who seemed to parallel Macbeth as her values are compromised (Shelley as Lady Macbeth, undone by her treachery? Or is that Lemoines? Or the argument that everyone represents Macbeth, a little bit, with their differing ambitions for power?) The plot is well paced; slow, but effectively so, the narrative shifts framed by the different POVs explore our character's motivations and ideology, and the only other thing that took me out of the story were the early aforementioned political rants characters go on, which at times can feel more like speeches for a theatrical piece as they don't really feel like conversations, and a reader can feel easily put off not necessarily by their content, but by their length and the number we have to read before the plot starts really happening.
I have no real knowledge of the New Zealand political climate in the 2010s so unfortunately a lot of the satire/criticism/references to real events definitely went over my head.
I expected a different kind of novel, but I wasn't disappointed with what this turned out to be instead.