“The Korowai Pass had been closed since the end of the summer, when a spate of shallow earthquakes triggered a landslide that buried a stretch of the highway in rubble. The town of Thorndike, located just north of the pass in the foothills of the Korowai ranges, was bounded on one side by the lake, and on the other by Korowai National Park.”
That’s the New Zealand setting for Eleanor Catton’s novel Birnam Wood. The landslide has also left a sizable farm abandoned. This land is of interest to the main characters of the story. The American billionaire Robert Lemoine says he is interested in using it to build an end-of-the-world bunker. He owns a company that sells a variety of drones and uses them extensively himself to track movements and keep an eye on his property.
Mira is interested in the land for a very different purpose. She is the organizer of Birnam Wood, a gardening collective that plants crops on any unused or abandoned land that they can get away with. The collective has been struggling to stay afloat, and so when Mira meets Lemoine and he offers to fund their operation, Mira agrees immediately.
But Lemoine is only using Birnam Wood and the bunker as covers for why he is really interested in the land, and it has everything to do with wealth. Things take a very dark turn, and although justice is served, it’s at a high cost. Catton is one of those writers who is a notch above the rest.
As the jacket says this is a “brilliantly constructed study of intentions, actions, and consequences.” If you’re looking for a well written psychological thriller, then you must read Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton.