This book by Eleanor Catton looks at the horrors of late capitalism and manages to also be a wildly fun read. Catton’s first novel since the Booker Prize–winning “The Luminaries (2013),” it recounts how an eco-activist group in New Zealand becomes entangled with an American billionaire. Mira Bunting is the brainchild behind Birnam Wood, an “activist collective” of guerrilla gardeners who plant on unused land (sometimes with permission) and scavenge (or steal) materials to grow food. Bunting is a “self-mythologizing rebel” whose passions are tempered only somewhat by Shelley Noakes, who sees herself as Bunting’s “sensible, dependable, predictable sidekick.” This role is starting to chafe — as is the lack of money — and Noakes plans to leave Birnam Wood. Just as Noakes is about to cut ties, Bunting makes an announcement: On a recent scouting trip near Korowai National Park, she located a farming property owned by a Kiwi farmer named Owen Darvish, temporarily abandoned due to a recent earthquake. This land is soon to transfer ownership from Darvish to a rich tech CEO looking for a spot to take shelter from in case of the doomsday. When the businessman, Robert Lemoine, catches Bunting scouting on the land, he offers to bankroll the group to the tune of US$100,000 since the act will help his bid for New Zealand citizenship. What could go wrong? Catton swirls among perspectives, including those of Bunting, Noakes, Lemoine, Darvish and his wife, and a former Birnam Wood member called Tony, whose aspirations to fame look within reach as he suspects he’s got a major scoop concerning Lemoine’s real motives. In many ways, the novel is as saturated with moral scrutiny and propulsive plotting as 19th-century greats; it’s a twisty thriller via Charles Dickens, only with drones. But where Dickens revels in exposing moral bankruptcy, Catton is more interested in the ways everyone is cloudy-eyed with their own hubris in different ways. The result is a story that’s suspended on a tightrope just above nihilism, and readers will hold their breath until the last page. | 