In Act 1 of Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth questions his plan to commit regicide in opposition to King Duncan, saying, “I have no spur / To prick the sides of my intent, but only / Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself / And falls on th’other.” Vaulting ambition and the willful blindness that may accompany it type the tragedy of Birnam Wood, Eleanor Catton’s third novel and the follow-up to her 2013 Booker Prize winner, The Luminaries.
The Birnam Wood of the title refers to not the Scottish city of the play however to an activist collective in New Zealand whose members harvest crops planted “without permission on public or unattended lands.” The group’s founder, Mira Bunting, has an idealistic aim: “radical, widespread, and lasting social change” that reveals “how arbitrary and absurdly prejudicial the entire concept of land ownership” is. But there’s an issue: The collective has hassle breaking even.
A doable answer arrives within the type of a pure catastrophe, when earthquakes result in a landslide, inflicting the closure of the Korowai Pass and reducing off the small fictional city of Thorndike. Not removed from the location of the landslide is a farm owned by the soon-to-be-knighted Owen Darvish. Paradoxically, Owen’s pest management service has partnered with American tech company Autonomo on a conservation mission to rescue endemic species from extinction. Mira’s plan: purchase the farm for Birnam Wood.
In each of her novels, Catton has proven that she’s an professional at constructing rigidity from an intricate plot. One of the complicating elements in Birnam Wood is Autonomo co-founder Robert Lemoine, “a serial entrepreneur, a venture capitalist, and, apparently, a billionaire.” He needs to construct a bunker on the farm and retailer treasured cargo that will make him, “by several orders of magnitude, the richest person who had ever lived.” When he catches Mira on the property, he suggests they be part of forces, however in true Shakespearean style, Robert’s intent is probably not what he claims.
Catton brilliantly weaves different characters and plot components into the combo, amongst them Tony Gallo, a former collective member and would-be journalist who rails in opposition to capitalism, needs to put in writing “a searing indictment of the super-rich” and is eager to reveal Robert for who he’s. Tony is simply too broadly drawn, and Catton generally over-explains the plot, however Birnam Wood remains to be a robust portrait of the uncomfortable relationship between capitalism and idealism, and the compromises and trade-offs one would possibly settle for in pursuit of a aim. As some of Catton’s characters study, vaulting ambition could be admirable, but when one o’erleaps and falls, the touchdown is something however easy.
Correction, March 7, 2023: This article has been up to date to replicate that Birnam Wood is Catton’s third novel and The Luminaries is her second.
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