
Birnam Wood
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Saskia Maarleveld
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By:
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Eleanor Catton
About this listen
“Birnam Wood is terrific. As a multilayered, character-driven thriller, it’s as good as it gets. Ruth Rendell would have loved it. A beautifully textured work—what a treat.” (Stephen King)
“One of the finest writers of our time.” (Jonathan Ruppin, The Independent)
The Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries brings us Birnam Wood, a gripping thriller of high drama and kaleidoscopic insight into what drives us to survive.
Birnam Wood is on the move....
A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last.
But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the place: He has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker, or so he tells Birnam’s founder, Mira, when he catches her on the property. He’s intrigued by Mira and by Birnam Wood; although they’re poles apart politically, it seems Lemoine and the group might have enemies in common. But can Birnam trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust one another?
A gripping psychological thriller from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its drama, Austenian in its wit, and, like both influences, fascinated by what makes us who we are. A brilliantly constructed study of intentions, actions, and consequences, it is a mesmerizing, unflinching consideration of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.
©2023 Eleanor Catton (P)2023 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Story
With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again.
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Really great book!!!
- By Malia on 04-23-19
By: Waubgeshig Rice
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Restless
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: Rosamund Pike
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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"I am Eva Delectorskaya," Sally Gilmartin announces, and so on a warm summer afternoon in 1976 her daughter, Ruth, learns that everything she ever knew about her mother was a carefully constructed lie. Sally Gilmartin is a respectable English widow living in picturesque Cotswold village; Eva Delectorskaya was a rigorously trained World War II spy, a woman who carried fake passports and retreated to secret safe houses, a woman taught to lie and deceive, and above all, to never trust anyone. Three decades later the secrets of Sally's past still haunt her.
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Favorite Book of 2007
- By Susianna on 12-27-07
By: William Boyd
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Soldier Sailor
- A Novel
- By: Claire Kilroy
- Narrated by: Simone Collins
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Claire Kilroy takes listeners deep inside the early days of motherhood. Exploring the clash of fierce love with a seismic shift in identity, Kilroy conjures the raw, tumultuous emotions of a new mother, as her marriage strains and she struggles with questions of equality, autonomy, and creativity.
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Favorite book of 2024!
- By Ana on 04-09-25
By: Claire Kilroy
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The Wren, the Wren
- By: Anne Enright
- Narrated by: Anne Enright, Aoife Duffin, Owen Roe, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Nell McDaragh never knew her grandfather, the celebrated Irish poet Phil McDaragh. But his love poems seem to speak directly to her. Restless and wryly self-assured, at twenty-two Nell leaves her mother Carmel’s orderly home to find her own voice as a writer (mostly online, ghost-blogging for an influencer) and to live a poetical life. As she chases obsessive love, damage, and transcendence, in Dublin and beyond, her grandfather’s poetry seems to guide her home.
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The different kinds of love, spoken and unspoken in a family.
- By Sheryl L on 05-08-24
By: Anne Enright
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The Librarianist
- A Novel
- By: Patrick deWitt
- Narrated by: Jim Meskimen
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Bob Comet is a retired librarian passing his solitary days surrounded by books and small comforts in a mint-colored house in Portland, Oregon. One morning on his daily walk he encounters a confused elderly woman lost in a market and returns her to the senior center that is her home. Hoping to fill the void he’s known since retiring, he begins volunteering at the center. Here, as a community of strange peers gathers around Bob, and following a happenstance brush with a painful complication from his past, the events of his life and the details of his character are revealed.
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An entertaining audio
- By Barbara S on 07-09-23
By: Patrick deWitt
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The Sheltering Sky
- A Novel
- By: Paul Bowles
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In this classic work of psychological terror, Paul Bowles examines the ways in which Americans apprehend other cultures--and the ways in which their incomprehension destroys them. The story of three American travelers adrift in the cities and deserts of North Africa after World War II, The Sheltering Sky is at once merciless and heartbreaking in its compassion. It etches the limits of human reason and intelligence--perhaps even the limits of human life --when they touch the unfathomable emptiness and impassive cruelty of the dessert.
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Classic Work of American 20th Century Fiction
- By Christian B. Kaufman on 06-12-24
By: Paul Bowles
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Milkman
- By: Anna Burns
- Narrated by: Bríd Brennan
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister, our protagonist, is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman. But when first brother-in-law sniffs out her struggle and rumours start to swell, middle sister becomes "interesting" - the last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed, and to be noticed is dangerous. Milkman is a tale of gossip and hearsay, silence and deliberate deafness. It is a story of inaction with enormous consequences.
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Like the writing, not the audio issues
- By Criticalthinker on 12-31-18
By: Anna Burns
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The Doctors Blackwell
- How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine
- By: Janice P. Nimura
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Elizabeth Blackwell believed from an early age that she was destined for a mission beyond the scope of "ordinary" womanhood. Though the world at first recoiled at the notion of a woman studying medicine, her intelligence and intensity ultimately won her the acceptance of the male medical establishment. In 1849, she became the first woman in America to receive an MD. She was soon joined in her iconic achievement by her younger sister, Emily, who was actually the more brilliant physician.
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A Case for Women in Medicine: The Blackwell Sister
- By Harriet on 02-10-21
By: Janice P. Nimura
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I Have Some Questions for You
- A Novel
- By: Rebecca Makkai
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan, JD Jackson
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past—the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four largely miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school, and the murder of her former roommate, Thalia Keith, in the spring of their senior year. Though the circumstances surrounding Thalia’s death and the conviction of the school’s athletic trainer, Omar Evans, are hotly debated online, Bodie prefers—needs—to let sleeping dogs lie.
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Really?
- By cydney numnum on 03-16-23
By: Rebecca Makkai
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Happiness Falls (Good Morning America Book Club)
- A Novel
- By: Angie Kim
- Narrated by: Shannon Tyo, Sean Patrick Hopkins, Thomas Pruyn, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Mia, the irreverent, hyperanalytical twenty-year-old daughter, has an explanation for everything—which is why she isn’t initially concerned when her father and younger brother Eugene don’t return from a walk in a nearby park. They must have lost their phone. Or stopped for an errand somewhere. But by the time Mia’s brother runs through the front door bloody and alone, it becomes clear that the father in this tight-knit family is missing and the only witness is Eugene, who has the rare genetic condition Angelman syndrome and cannot speak.
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A mixed review, but recommend
- By Andrea B. on 09-07-23
By: Angie Kim
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Gabriel's Moon
- A Novel
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: George Blagden
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of a fire that took his mother’s life. Every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames. His days are spent on the move as an acclaimed travel writer, capturing the changing landscapes of Europe in the grip of the Cold War. When he is offered the chance to interview Patrice Lumumba, newly elected president of the People’s Republic of the Congo, he finds himself drawn into a web of duplicities and betrayals.
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One of the best Boyd storylines, but...
- By WKB on 12-19-24
By: William Boyd
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Orbital
- By: Samantha Harvey
- Narrated by: Sarah Naudi
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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A slender novel of epic power and the winner of the Booker Prize 2024, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below.
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Dull
- By ELLEZEE on 02-03-24
By: Samantha Harvey
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The God of Small Things
- By: Arundhati Roy
- Narrated by: Sneha Mathan
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Likened to the works of Faulkner and Dickens when it was first published 20 years ago, this extraordinarily accomplished debut novel is a brilliantly plotted story of forbidden love and piercing political drama, centered on the tragic decline of an Indian family in the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India. Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, the twins Rahel and Esthappen fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family.
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Worthy Booker winner!
- By Saman on 08-10-17
By: Arundhati Roy
What listeners say about Birnam Wood
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anne
- 03-23-23
Captivating tale, masterfully told
I lost a week to this book and don’t regret a minute of it. It was exciting, thought-provoking, modern, and thoroughly entertaining. Fabulous narrator.
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11 people found this helpful
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- ER
- 05-22-23
Catton’s narrative will leave you stunned!
Intricate character revelation joined with head-spinning plot twists and breakneck action. A heady brew to say the least. A foreboding overwhelms you as you read on (or listen). The connection to Shakespearean tragedy is clear. The Audible narrator is outstanding. Highly recommended!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Susan
- 11-22-23
Fantastic listen
Twists and turns I never saw coming…Just when I thought I knew what was going to happen…it didn’t.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Jan
- 05-13-23
Exquisite storytelling.
The author handles levels of story without confusing me. She clearly develops each character’s motivation so all of their vulnerabilities and choices make perfect sense. I am stunned by her story and writing ability. Thank you, Eleanor.
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- Patricia Price
- 04-08-23
Shallow. Unbelievable, characters.
I was drawn to the up-to-date background of this book. I was so disappointed in the ending. Some of the behavior of the characters seemed incongruent. I was literally depressed at the end of the story.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-30-23
Interesting but sorry if anguished plot
the mystery part of this book kept me listening, but the plot wasn't very pleasurable and the end of the books in gratuitous to me.
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- Madeleine Homan
- 06-17-23
On the Fence
There were aspects of this that were fascinating. I found both girls to be complex and real and credible. The male characters were either buffoons, monomaniacal egomaniacs or straight up psychopaths. Tons of detail about some aspects then pull a ripcord and out? Ultimately the whole thing feels unfinished. But I am still thinking about it.
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- Susan
- 04-27-24
Engaging story cut a bit short
The narrator and story were engaging. I was even rooting for the flawed characters. I enjoyed it immensely until it ended rather too abruptly for my taste.
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- Scott
- 06-23-24
Good Until It Wasn't
Really good writing in the beginning, characters were well developed and a plot nicely woven. However, as time was winding down in the final hour, I kept thinking there should be a lot left, much the characters have yet to do. However, it was like the author got tired and quit.
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- Morgan Gray
- 02-10-25
The performance was everything
The incredible narrator made this, Mixed feelings about the story itself. I am become more fond of the book as time goes by.
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