Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton, an accomplished author who won the Booker Prize for her 2013 novel, The Luminaries, is a gripping, multi-layered psychological and political thriller about a young group of environmental idealists who collide with a ruthless billionaire.
The tale is set on New Zealand’s South Island, where a landslide has closed the pass, cut off access to the town of Thorndike, and left a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, philanthropic guerrilla collective that plants crops wherever they find open or unused space, often without permission. The organisation’s founder, Mira, sees the farm near Thorndike as a way for Birnam Wood to become solvent for the first time.
However, an American billionaire, Robert Lemoine, also has his eyes on the land, as its remoteness makes for an ideal location for him to construct his survivalist bunker, or so he claims. When he runs into Mira on the farm, Lemoine is intrigued by the activist, and the pair forms an unlikely alliance despite their vast political differences. But as the environmental ideologies and morals of the different players are eventually tested, trust issues arise.
Other notable characters include Tony, a former member of Birnam Wood and an aspiring and idealistic journalist who wants to put the world right and sets out to investigate Lemoine; Shelley, who brings accounting and planning skills to the collective; and Owen and Jill Darvish, the owners of the land being sold to the billionaire.
Despite something of a tedious start filled with the various characters’ back stories and ideologies, some of which are shared in long protracted debates and arguments (with sentences at times running to 200 words), the plot, when it kicks into gear, is action-packed and nail-biting.
The novel contains but is not limited to, the typical unscrupulous manipulation of billionaires, sundry clandestine activities, surveillance drones, phone hacking, mercenaries, armed chases, obstruction of justice, and murder. All seem to be greed-driven, with profit taking precedence over the prevention of global catastrophes like landslides, and even philanthropic groups have to bend their principles in order to survive.
I found Birnam Wood – probably my first real ‘environmental fiction’ read – challenging but also highly intriguing.
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