The idealist vs the entrepreneur: Birnam Wood, by Eleanor Catton, reviewed

I always feel an element of trepidation when approaching a new book by an author whose previous work I have admired. When the novelist in question won the Booker prize in 2013, and I was on the judging panel, the static crackle of anxiety is even more intense. And so the fearful question: is Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood a stinker? No, it isn’t. But will it ‘pull a Mantel’ and win the Booker again? I doubt it, though I would not rule out its appearance on other prize shortlists.

It is a subtle, sometimes acerbically comic and ultimately tragic novel of great sensitivity. It is also engaged, taking in topics such as climate change, cancelling and free speech, cultural appropriation, our relationship with new technologies, intersectionalism, sustainability, New Zealand’s self-image and hyper-charged capitalism. But it is fundamentally about morality.

The plot is structured around a stark contrast. On the one hand, we have Mira Bunting, a young guerrilla gardener, bent on reclaiming or occupying abandoned spaces to cultivate vegetables with her collective action group, Birnam Wood. On the other, there is Robert Lemoine, an American billionaire who has set his eyes on New Zealand as the perfect ark. Mira has discovered that a recently ennobled local worthy – whose company specialised in pest control – is selling some of his land. Lemoine wants to build his end-of-the-world bunker there, and there is an opportunity to squat on it illegally and make a garden grow. When Lemoine rumbles Mira, he makes a surprising offer. He likes her ‘move fast and break things’ attitude, so he offers Birnam Wood $100,000 to actualise her vision.

Neither character is without conceit; nor are they wholly innocent. Lemoine’s empire of shell companies is an eerie parallel to Mira’s democratic vision (no one doubts that she is the movement’s founder and inspiration, even if she is not ‘in charge’).