Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

From the Booker Prize–winning author of The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood is an electrifying eco-thriller grounded in a provocative and sly exploration of some of the most pressing issues of our times. Named one of the most anticipated books of the year by the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Winnipeg Free Press, Maclean's, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Guardian, LitHub, and Oprah Daily. 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 has created an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an 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. Then Mira, Birnam Wood’s founder, stumbles on an answer: occupying the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last. But Mira is not the only one interested in Thorndike. The enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker, or so he tells Mira when he catches her on the property. Intrigued by Mira and Birnam Wood, he makes them an offer that would set them up for the long term. But can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust one another? 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 consideration of intentions, actions, and consequences, it is a mesmerizing, unflinching consideration of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.

I found none of the characters (or the dialogue) believable. But the thing I found most unbelievable was that leftist activists in their early thirties had never done acid before.

Wow, just wow. This totally packed a punch I didn't see coming in the first 3/4. The ending ramped it from a 4 star to a 5 star read.

Birnam Wood are a group of guerilla activist gardeners in Christchurch who as well as planting legitimate crops in people's spare ground and harvesting and selling the produce, cultivate hidden spaces in abandoned lots. They're pretty small fry but founder Mira has her eyes set on bigger things, namely a large farm in Thorndike, bordering the Korowai National Park. The farm is owned by the newly knighted Sir Owen Darvish a pest controller with aspirations of grandeur and his wife Jill who inherited the property from her parents. However, since a landslide has created a dead end not far beyond the Darvish farm, essentially ruining the economy of Thorndike, the couple has moved to Wellington and Mira sees the land as claimable.

When she arrives at the farm though, billionaire American businessman Robert Lemoine is already there, having secretly offered to buy the property from the Darvishes to allow access to the rare metals in the neighbouring National Park, something he could never get through legitimate channels.

Lemoine, seeing in Mira a fellow opportunist decides to woo Birnam Wood with money and fame, and the game between the two is afoot.

There's so much going on in this book - relationships, between Owen and Jill, Mira and her colleague Shelley, and between idealistic and determined free lance writer Tony and the collective. Tony thinks Lemoine is hiding something, and if he can prove it, it'll be the biggest break of his career. I also enjoyed the subtle dark humour, especially when things get misinterpreted, misunderstood or lost in translation.

But the real gem in Birnam Wood is the last 1/4 of the book, where all the parts of the story come together for a totally unexpected and brilliantly crafted ending.