Book Review: Birnam Wood

Birnam Wood
by Eleanor Catton
Review by Ray

Birnam Wood is a thriller like nothing I’ve read before. The characters are carefully and skilfully constructed and the story is meticulously crafted, and the result is a novel that is fresh, unexpected, and twists on itself at each turn. Full of the horrors of late-stage capitalism, Birnam Wood also manages to be bitingly funny – especially in part one. It’s also ripe for discussion – as soon as I finished it, I wanted to talk to literally everyone in my life about it and all of its complexity and shock. Wonderfully engaging, deeply disturbing, utterly brilliant.