B irnam Wood by Eleanor Catton is a gripping tale of deception, cover-up, rivalries, and sexual tension set against a backdrop of environmental exploitation by rich, powerful men and their high-tech companies.
Does that sound vaguely familiar at all?
Synopsis
B irnam Wood by Eleanor Catton opens in the Korowai National Park on New Zealand’s South Island, where a landslide caused by earth tremors, has blocked the main road between the town of Klondike and everywhere else. The closure effectively cuts off the town, and a large former sheep station.
In Christchurch, a New Age collective named Birnam Wood, cultivates small plots of land around the city in people’s yards; in the gardens of care homes and pre-schools, and anywhere that land isn’t being used. In exchange for use of their space and for access to their mains water, the collective shares half the yield of its crops. The surplus is given to the volunteer workforce and donated to the needy of the city.
Heading up the collective and constantly trying to find ways to make it self-sufficient, is Mira. When Mira reads about the cut-off former sheep station in Klondike, she envisages acres and acres of land that will lie unused until at least the spring. That’s more than enough space to grow the quantity of produce needed to put Birnam Wood on a solid financial footing.
Mira drives up to survey the place and runs into a tech billionaire, Robert Lemoine. On the face of it, Lemoine is a survivalist who has just acquired the property and is building a bunker. When Lemoine tells Mira he’s willing to invest in Birnam Wood, it seems to be the answers to all the collective’s dreams.
What follows is a gripping tale of military-sized, undercover operations, laced with a complex underbelly of personal relationships. And like all good thrillers, there’s a twist in the tail.
My Review
I enjoyed reading Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton and did find myself gripped by the action.
The Birnam Wood concept is one it’s easy to buy into and, as a reader, you’re rooting (ouch!) for the collective to do well. In the early stages, the presentation of philosophical and political posturing (as narrated through the character Tony) of the group’s raison d’être is dense and heavy to wade through.
However, it’s nicely countered by the unexpected sexual tension between Mira and Lemoine which adds an interesting twist to the action.
I’m not a big fan of the recent glut of thrillers with twists in the endings, particularly when those twists feel utterly unreal and manufactured. But there appears to be an insatiable appetite for them being adapted into TV mini-series.
I don’t consider the ending of Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton to be on the same scale as for example, Behind Her Eyes based on the novel by Sarah Pinborough, but for me, it definitely veers in that direction.
A gripping, and relevant read nevertheless.
