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lyndaroni 's review for:
Birnam Wood
by Eleanor Catton
In an effort to clean up my TBR, despite having no recollection of where I’d even heard of this book, I gave it a try. Lit fic is not my usual genre and the long winded style of this was a bit tough to get into at first, but the characterizations really hooked me. The first ~270 pages are very little plot and a whole lot of inner monologues, which could be massively boring to some but IMO did such a thorough job of creating these people. On paper they have admirable goals but in reality are all seriously flawed, insecure, and wildly self-absorbed. They feel SO real and also awful. Meanwhile, the plot itself is very slow with a rapid crescendo at the very end. The ending was not satisfying from a plot perspective but it was poignant. Glad I read it!