Birnham Wood by Eleanor Catton is a book I have seen recommended and discussed on social media for some time. Having heard the recommendations I thought I would give it a read and see what I thought of it too.

Here’s the blurb on the back of the book:

Birnam Wood is on the move…

A landslide on New Zealand’s South Island has caused a sizeable farm to be left abandoned. To the activist collective Birnham Wood, this presents an opportunity. For years, the group has struggled to break even; to occupy the farm would mean a shot at solvency at last. But they hadn’t figured on American billionaire Robert Lemoine, who also has an interest in the place. Can they trust him? And. as the collective’s ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other?

As the book, Birnham Wood, starts we meet Mira and Shelley. They are integral members of a gardening collective called Birnham Wood based in New Zealand. The collective works by planting on unused and under used spaces – not all of them entirely legally. They also grow on people’s unused garden spaces and transform their gardens in return for space in that garden to grow produce for themselves. The produce they grow on this land is sold on to gain funds for the group’s activities and expenses.

Mira and Shelley are somewhat at odds with the direction that Birnham Wood is going in with Shelley wanting the group to become more organised and wanting to actually earn enough to break even and make life easier. Mira is far more ideologically driven than Mira. Shelley is wanting to leave Birnham Wood, something Mira senses and is keen to try to put off as long as possible as she realises how much she values her relationship with Shelley. But Shelley has already started looking for jobs in established charities.

There has been a huge landslide at the Korowai Pass, which has meant that the town of Thorndike has largely been cut off from the rest of New Zealand for some time. Mira hears about an apparently abandoned farm in Thorndike belonging to the wife of the newly knighted business man Owen Darvish. Mira believes that if Birnham Wood could occupy the farm and use it to grow a lot of produce, even for a relatively short time, then they stood a chance of becoming solvent for the first time, and maybe Shelley might be tempted to stay on in the collective. The return of a former member of the collective, Tony, who Mira had been in love with and who had left town almost immediately after he and Mira had slept together, challenges the groups ideology and spurs them on to head to the farm at Thorndike. Tony has his own reasons for being interested in this farm and what is going on there and he follows the group to the farm without letting them know.

Birnham Wood is not the only party interested in the farm. American billionaire, Robert Lemoine, who is used to getting everything he wants and controlling every situation – partly through being able to effectively spy on people through the use of the technology that helped make his fortune – is working on a deal to buy the farm from the Darvishes, he wants the land only, as the farm will remain in the Darvish’s ownership. He has told anyone he speaks to that the reason he wants to buy the land is to build a survivalist bunker there, and before the deal goes through, he wants to properly ensure that he can get this shelter built, but he actually has other reasons for being interested in the land, and he is not necessarily planning on completing the deal.

Birnham Wood is a book about conflicting interests, and how they can both work together and work entirely against each other. It is a book about relationships of all types – from the long established marital relationship the Jill and Owen Darvish share, the infatuation Tony and Mira have for each other, but neither can properly talk to each other about, the attraction Mira feels for Robert Lemoine, and the most significant relationship that Mira has – the one with Shelley.

Robert Lemoine, the scheming billionaire with his self-interested and potentially dangerous designs he has on the farm is able to manipulate Owen Darvish into giving him what he wants, and he enjoys toying with Mira and the collective as a whole. He is very definitely the villain of the piece, and he is written exactly as you would expect a machiavellian American billionaire would be written. Charming and charismatic when he wants to be, Lemoine is a thoroughly unlikable person and he plays on Mira and Shelley’s relationship with each other to make the situation turn out the way he wants it to, as much as he can.

Birnham Wood is a very good book, and one I thoroughly enjoyed reading. I loved the story, and wanted to keep turning those pages. I wanted to see what happened. I am not sure exactly who I was rooting for, but I very much liked that these were all complicated characters, none of whom were entirely sympathetic.

It is quite a long book at 423 pages, but it was not a book that felt like a slog to get to the end. Quite the opposite for me. I have other books by Eleanor Catton at home, and reading this has definitely made me want to get them out and read them too, once I have read a few of the other books that are already on my TBR pile! Probably.

I would recommend the book, and would give it 4.5 stars out of 5. It was one of my favourite reads of 2024.