Making a better world in rural New Zealand

Eleanor Catton tells her story Birnam Wood by means of four points of view: Mira, Shelley, Tony, and Robert Lemoine. There are couple others but they are minor. One of the novel's pleasures is the way Catton shifts point of view without chapter breaks and without losing the reader.

The novel is set in New Zealand's fictional Korowai National Park and a farm that abuts it. "Birnam Wood" is the name of an ecological (essentially communist), activist collective that plants vegetables wherever the members can get away with doing so—friends' yards, vacant lots, and public lands where they won't be noticed. They sell, eat, and donate the produce.

Although Birnam Wood is ostensibly leaderless, 29-year-old Mira, a trained horticulturalist, is the leader and one of the founders. Shelley is a little younger than Mira and another founder; if Mira is the group's spark plug Shelley is the oil that keeps it running smoothly. Tony, and another founder, has been in Mexico teaching English for the five years before the book opens. He's back, at loose ends, and uneasy about reconnecting with Birnam Wood because his departure for Mexico was awkward. 

Robert Lemoine, in his mid-40s, is an American billionaire, a founder of Automoto, a Silicon Valley technology company that, among other things manufactures drones. Lemoine plans to buy the farm and build a bunker that will withstand the nuclear winter that comes with nuclear war. Beware of Americans bearing checkbooks.

The book is a pleasure because each character clearly wants something and tries to get  it. Mira wants to put Birnam Wood on a solid financial base; if it improves the world so much the better. Shelley wants to stop playing second fiddle to Mira and do something else. Idealistic Tony wants to write an article that will expose the corruption and perfidy of New Zealand's government. Lemoine wants to increase his billions. What the characters do—or don't do—to obtain what they want leads plausibly and naturally to conflict.

Birnam Wood is worth reading slowly to savor Catton's writing, long blocks of prose broken by spurts of dialogue. She includes descriptions of events in the characters' biographies, but I never bumped on these as data dumps or "exposition"; somehow the memories, histories, past events felt natural as I reached them. The book is interesting also for Catton's ability to evoke the New Zealand landscape and the three young characters' feelings about the country. Birnam Wood from the title to the last sentence is a remarkable piece of fiction.