North Woods

Locations
Call Number: Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / Mason, Daniel, Fiction / Mason, Daniel
On Shelf At: Malletts Creek Branch

"When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths a mass grave--only to discover that the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a sinister conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle: As each inhabitant confronts the wonder and mystery around them, they begin to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive"-- Provided by publisher.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Really fun read submitted by Jean on July 9, 2024, 7:29pm Such a twisty good read that when I finished, I wanted to go back to the beginning and read the whole novel over again. The author has a lot fun shifting genres and historical periods each chapter. That yellow house in the north woods has a lot of ghosts.

Slow start but then enjoyable submitted by alharman1022 on July 11, 2024, 9:26am This book took me a bit to get into but then I really enjoyed seeing the stories play out and intertwine in the same setting

beautiful story submitted by rib on July 12, 2024, 2:26pm It also took me a while to get into it, but once I started, I couldn't put it down! Really beautiful story blending historical fiction with a bit of magic realism and lots of great nature writing.

Exceptional & memorable submitted by aminarce on July 16, 2024, 9:18am When I first heard what this book was about—all the occupants of a New England farmhouse from the 1700s to the present— I thought it sounded dry and wasn’t interested. But do many people kept raving about it, I thought I’d give it a try— and was so pleasantly surprised. I was absolutely swept up in it— gorgeous prose, interesting history, compelling characters. And it’s funny! A wonderful, immersive read that’s stayed with me, months later.

Twisty and compelling is right! submitted by foilista on July 22, 2024, 10:20am A beautiful paean to to the natural world, and unputdownable stories to boot. The most surprising aspect of this novel is how richly drawn the characters are, even though we don't spend all that much time with them. Also, some drama! I also appreciated how interwoven the stories are. Also, I was NOT expecting the magical realist elements to the novel... get ready for some ghosts! This novel has really stuck with me, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

If you like the place-based narrative, check out Richard McGuire's gorgeous (and unconventional) graphic novel Here.

Finely written historical fiction, both mysterious and magical submitted by mecunningham on July 24, 2024, 6:27am One of my favorite genres of fiction has always been the big, multi-generational family saga novel that winds back on itself and shows the continuities across decades and centuries. In North Woods, Daniel Mason takes that genre and twists it, focusing not on one family but one patch of land in Western Massachusetts and its inhabitants from colonial times through the present day and beyond. The result is finely written historical fiction, shot through with threads both mysterious and magical.

Mason is generous with Easter eggs in his narrative, hiding little bits and pieces of previous inhabitants throughout the yellow house that comes to stand on the land they all share. He isn’t overly cute with these connections, though; they’re palimpsests of the past, not mechanisms to tie everything together into one neatly explained unified plot. Some of the characters are more developed than others—the 19th-century sisters Mary and Alice Osgood, for example, interested me far more than Lillian in the mid-20th century.

I especially liked how Mason plays with form and genre within the novel, interweaving “regular” narrative chapters with a hodgepodge of interstitial ones, including songs and medical case notes, a pulpy true-crime article, a letter from Charles Osgood to his daughters, a confession, and much more (including one chapter written almost entirely in footnote form).

The progression of North Woods, like those woods themself, is both sedimentary and cyclical: time moves forward, the present layering on top of the past, while nature lives, dies, and reemerges transformed. Neither the characters nor the woods are eternal, but they remain eternally linked in this engaging, intriguing novel.