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A review by carriepond
North Woods by Daniel Mason
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
North Woods by Daniel Mason is simultaneously sweeping and intimate in scope; it is introspective, layered, brilliant, and surprisingly fun and funny. The novel opens on a June day, as two lovers flee into the woods from a Puritan colony in what is modern-day western Massachusetts. "They were Nature's wards now, he told her, they had crossed into a Realm." They make their home in a clearing in those woods that becomes the focal point of Mason's brilliant novel. From there, North Woods advances through history, using straightforward narrative as well as apparent historical documents and accounts to reveal the stories of those who live or visit the yellow house in the clearing, both human and animal. We meet an English solider turned orchard owner and his spinster daughters, a landscape painter, an avid hunter who seeks counsel from a psychic as his wife becomes convinced she can hear ghosts, a harried mother and her schizophrenic son, a true crime reporter, a widower and amateur history buff exiled from his historical society for sexual impropriety, and a young researcher. The novel connects these characters not only by their physical presence in the woods throughout history but also in other delightful and unexpected ways.
I loved this novel, about the interconnection between humans and nature, the way that the past shapes the present in so many ways that we can't fathom or see, and how everything (people, houses, forests, humanity itself) is both transient and ephemeral, eternal and infinite. There is an element of magic or mysticism that meshes perfectly with the mundane, and Mason treats both with equal reverence and attention. Toward the end of the novel, a character muses that "the only way to understand the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change." In North Woods, we see that in action-- an apple tree rises from the ribs of a fallen soldier, a beetle is unknowingly transported deep into the forest to feast on and fell its elm trees. And the novel itself is a cycle-- beginning on a day in June, ending on a day in May far in the future.
The novel was beautiful to read, but it was also fun to read. I loved watching Mason weave together all the pieces of this epic story, and there were also parts that made me chuckle or laugh out loud, including a hilarious and prolonged sex scene between two beetles.
I loved this book!
I loved this novel, about the interconnection between humans and nature, the way that the past shapes the present in so many ways that we can't fathom or see, and how everything (people, houses, forests, humanity itself) is both transient and ephemeral, eternal and infinite. There is an element of magic or mysticism that meshes perfectly with the mundane, and Mason treats both with equal reverence and attention. Toward the end of the novel, a character muses that "the only way to understand the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change." In North Woods, we see that in action-- an apple tree rises from the ribs of a fallen soldier, a beetle is unknowingly transported deep into the forest to feast on and fell its elm trees. And the novel itself is a cycle-- beginning on a day in June, ending on a day in May far in the future.
The novel was beautiful to read, but it was also fun to read. I loved watching Mason weave together all the pieces of this epic story, and there were also parts that made me chuckle or laugh out loud, including a hilarious and prolonged sex scene between two beetles.
I loved this book!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder and Injury/Injury detail