I’m judging a 2020 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory
glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

Stunning book, came very close to the list of finalists.

This is an anthology of various stories by Daniel Mason. There are nine stories in the collection. Each concerns some individual and their lives. The title story, which is the last in the collection, concerns the life and artistic work of Arthur Bispo do Rosario, who lived in Brazil, was diagnosed as a schizophrenic and spent fifty years in an institution, where he embroidered lists of all he encountered in spectacular works of art.
Other stories portray a boxer and the scientific collector Alfred Russel Wallace who was a contemporary of Charles Darwin and extended his work. A Civil War reenactor is the protagonist of a story as is the Egyptian Psammetichus I. A young boy sick with tuberculosis in Victorian England is portrayed as is a woman hot air balloonist and an agent in the jungle who spends his life alone. My favorite story is one called The Second Doctor Service. It portrays a middle aged doctor who starts to have periods where he is absent from his body such as found in petit mal epilepsy. He starts to realize that while he is absent he is interacting with others with a different personality and as time goes on, he begins to realize that everyone else, including his wife, prefers the other personality.

Daniel Mason is a physician who has written several novels that were acclaimed such as The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier. He is currently a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Stanford University. The stories are immediately engaging and his ability to pinpoint personality traits is enticing. I felt several of the stories had a weaker ending than I expected. This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.

I've really struggled with my review and rating for A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth, a collection of short stories. Daniel Mason's writing is impeccable and I was impressed...but some of the stories felt impenetrable and I didn't quite connect with them. There is quite a variety of characters and settings to draw one in: a pugilist, a hot air balloonist, and a woman struggling to deal with her son's ailments and many others. Overall, I felt that this collection was worth the read and so I have rounded up to 4 stars, but I vacillated between ratings for awhile.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and Little, Brown and Company for the opportunity to read an e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

A Descriptive, Emotive Collection of Short Stories all of which Speak to the Soul!

A story of a mother and son, brings depth and heart. The son, sick, the mother desolate. Another of a doctor with memory loss who feels adrift and believes his body has been overtaken by another. Then there is a fighter who must face his fears. My favorite was that of two brothers and specifically their love for each other, their patriotism and their immense struggle.

This collection is character driven and brilliantly plotted and quite unique.

Thank you to NetGalley and Little Brown and Company for the arc.

Daniel Mason is a greatly talented writer, whose range of narrative is amply demonstrated by this short story collection. These stories are rooted in history, some recent, some not, but all share a compelling voice and sense of period and place. Highly recommended. Thank you to NetGalley for the advance reading copy.

Daniel Mason’s collection of nine short stories that cover a range of eras and places, topics, and themes, begins with Death of a Pugilist, or The Famous Battle of Jacob Burke & Blindman McGraw which captured my attention from the first words.

Born a winter child in the Bristol slums, in the quayside heap known only as “The Rat,” Jacob Burke, who would come to battle the great McGraw on that fateful day in 1824, was a son of the stevedore Isaac Burke and the seamstress Anne Murphy.

Seventeen rounds of physical battering as this boxing match is shared so vividly, you can sense the tension, feel the sweat being slung around as bodies are battered and tossed around this ring, hear the jeers and cheers and see it all.

In The Ecstasy of Alfred Russel Wallace a British collector of fossil, flower, beetle, stone, even as a child, a story that follows his life in the Malay Archipelago. Nature filled him with an ecstasy that at times felt like lust.

Sometimes, during the night, she wakes to a presence, a creature sliding through the darkness, watching, waiting to descend. She doesn’t dare to look; to move even slightly is to risk waking the child, and it’s for him she knows the ghost has come. This story, On Growing Ferns and Other Plants in Glass Cases, in the Midst of the Smoke of London is a story of a mother and her son.

A Frenchman responsible for maintaining a lone railway station in the Amazon rainforest, with little connection to the outside world is the focus for The Line Agent Pascal. For the truth was that, however distant his colleagues were, he’d come to understand them intimately over the years, could describe each man, each station, with details he had never seen. He knows Pinto who is at Varzea Nova from his requests for medicine, knows he has a wife and daughter and that Pinto has lumbago, and similarly, he knows the men at all the stations, the ins and outs of their lives. Much like we come to know each other on social media, through the details shared over time.

In On the Cause of Winds and Waves, &c A woman, Celeste, is an aeronaute, a balloonist who writes her sister as this story begins, ”…something has driven me skyward … Even my baptismal name has felt like some hint of destiny. She shares her story of a flight where she ascends higher than anyone else had, when her eye catches a strange vision, a tear, a rent in the firmament. Her husband, Pierre, seeks to capitalize on this while scientists disbelieve, and so she is sent back up – this time with a man who is sure to be more rational, believable.

A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth is shared through letters, reports, a journal-ish sharing of a life. Beginnings. 22.December.1938 Midnight, accompanied by seven angels on clouds shaped like a stairway, they left me at the house, at the base of the walls. Sao Clemente Street.number.301.Botafogo.Rio de Janeiro, I alone with lance in hand. This is shared in a foggy dream-like, hallucinogenic quality, by a man whose attachment to reality is somewhat tenuous, shared through his writing he shows his delusions, obsessions and strangely beautiful thoughts. Here I register the 9 ways man walks toward things and the 11 ways he flees.

I haven’t covered all of the stories, there are nine in total, but all are worth reading, even if they are not equally captivating. In each story, you will find yourself in a different place, time and find yourself pulled into the life of another person, perhaps in a different place or time, but each will leave you thinking and, if you’re like me, enchanted. This was my introduction to Daniel Mason’s writing, and I look forward to reading more.

Published: 05 May 2020

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Little, Brown and Company

#ARegistryofMyPassageupontheEarth #NetGalley #JoyceCarolOatesPrize2020

An excellent collection of short stories very well written very involving.An author who I will
be following and recommending..#netgalley#littlebrown

I found all of these stories very interesting and the book as a whole a fantastic read. I highly recommend for all readers

Published by Little, Brown and Company on May 5, 2020

The stories in A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth explore the multitude of ways in which lives are and have been lived, across time and geography, lives that resemble each other only in the experience of emotions that define human existence. The nine stories cover an astonishing array of subjects, joined only by being set in the past.

Jacob Burke, a brawler known as Muscular, takes on his greatest challenge in “Death of the Pugilist, or The Famous Battle of Jacob Burke & Blindman McGraw.” Burke and Blindman Ben McGraw fight an epic battle in 1824 that attracts thousands. The story is less about fighting than the reason for fighting: “the reason he hit is that there was joy in hitting, real joy in the simplicity and the freedom and the astounding number of answers in a single movement of his arms.” The story’s attraction, apart from its depiction of grit and determination, is its exploration of good and evil. There is good in all of the story’s pugilists (although Burke wonders “how a hitter could be a good man, and whether he was good only because in the Great Scheme he was on the bottom and he couldn’t be anything else, that if conditions were different, he wouldn’t be so”) because they have open hearts, but there is evil in the men who exploit their pain for profit. This is my favorite story in the collection and it might become one of my all-time favorite short stories.

“The Ecstasy of Alfred Russel Wallace” follows a “bug collector, species man” who travels the world observing life. Wallace works out a theory of natural selection that he immediately sends to Darwin, a better known scientist who might be a bit reluctant to acknowledge Wallace’s contribution to the field. Not that recognition matters to Wallace; he is moved by his epiphany, his understanding that when he “looked upon the world,” what he saw “was not life, but life transforming.” In a very different story of a self-sustaining traveler, “The Line Agent Pascal” tells of a man who operates a telegraph station in a remote South American location, joined to humanity only by the daily signals sent by other line agents, a connection that sustains him despite the knowledge that isolated men might die unexpectedly in a multitude of horrible ways.

“For the Union Dead” is narrated by the grandson of immigrants. His American-born father served as a Navy physician in Vietnam while his foreign-born uncle, longed for a connection of his own to America. He found it by playing dead in Civil War reenactments, making a figurative sacrifice that made him feel truly American.

The most playful story adds to an account by Herodotus of an ancient’s Greek’s experiments in child development. A story about raising an asthmatic child in smoke-filled London, when leaches were the preferred cure for most maladies, examines a mother’s devotion to her son.

The last two stories have quasi-religious themes. One is about a female balloonist who, despite being shunned by the male natural scientists of her time, discovers and gives herself up to a rift in the sky. The title story tells of a man in an asylum who is making a registry of his life to share with God, a man who perceives angels and finds hidden connections in the objects he collects.

Some of the stories collected in A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth appeal to the intellect more than the heart, but they are all heartfelt in the depth with which the explore the evolving human condition throughout history. The stories are stunningly fresh. Each delivers a nutritious serving of insight and hope. I’ve never read anything quite like them. This is Daniel Mason’s first story collection and the world is richer for it.

RECOMMENDED

The Author writes unique stories about nine different characters and the experience of each one as they attempt passage through this world with whatever situation or opportunity life has dealt to them. He quickly takes you into the depths of their life. And the reader will be transported to far away places and become entranced with the experiences of each tale. For some, the hardest to follow may be the man from the asylum. Although each story is fiction in nature, one could easily see how each could be a true story of a life passage for the variety of Mason's characters. The reader will be enthralled with each life event, and yearn to follow the mystery of how each life's passage unfolds.

The themes of these stories, among them--greed and the search for knowledge, kept me reading. I'm not a short story fan, but books like this make me want to read more. To be able to tell so much in so little space is an admirable skill.

“...he found himself marveling at this realization that he could live in the thoughts of another person, a realization that seemed no less a miracle than if somehow he’d been twinned.”

“Tomorrow, will he capsize us upon a deserted isle? Or return us to the softness of our earthly beds? Or will he have us float forever through his inkwell, until the final page is written and the book is closed?”

I’ve read two other books by this author. I loved “The Piano Tuner” but didn’t much care for “The Winter Soldier”. Other than the fact that the writing in all three books is beautiful and elegant, this book of short stories didn’t have much in common with the novels. These stories often have a lighter touch - some whimsy and tenderness that is not in the novels. Each of these stories is different and I think the variety is one of the things that kept me interested, even though I am not a huge fan of short stories.

Each of the protagonists in these stories has some sort of revelation or epiphany. There is some event that causes them to understand themselves, someone else or the universe just a little better. Among other characters, there’s a boxer outmatched by a Goliath, an obsessed naturalist, a balloonist who finds a truth in the sky, an immigrant finding his calling in Civil War re-enactments and a doctor meeting his better half. My least favorite was the title story, but even it wasn’t a dud. 4.5 stars

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

A strong collection of stories. I thoroughly enjoyed most of them and would definitely be interested in reading more of Daniel Mason's works.

Daniel Mason is unfair. Having already established a successful medical practice as a psychiatrist and assistant professor at Stanford, he also is a talented writer. In this book of short stories, he writes in a throwback style reminiscent of O. Henry or Edgar Allen Poe. Some of the stories are really great, such as the Second Doctor Service, and others are merely good, but they are all unlike anything else you've read. Mason jars us with his anachronistic style but it is well-suited to these tales and their times.

Rating this book is an impossibility. It was, for me, a challenging and difficult book. The author is a professor of psychiatry at Stanford, and the last story describes the thoughts and experiences of a schizophrenic man who is an actual historical figure. It may well be brilliant, but many times, to me, it was also obscure.

The language is 19th century in cadence, and the stories vary widely in subject matter. In one a female hot air balloonist flies high enough to spot a rift in the universe between earth and sky. In another, a young widow struggles to heal her son's lung difficulties that stem from London's coal smogged air.

The writing is on a high level and each story describes a unique set of circumstances. I was left feeling that these were beyond my level of comprehension. Thanks to the publisher and to Net Galley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This collection of short stories encompass moments in time for a variety of intriguing people within very different settings. Each one is of high quality and masterfully written, and should appeal to lovers of short stories and serve as a distraction from the troubled outside world.

These tales contain themes of obsession, compulsive behaviour, wonder, doubts and fears, epiphany, and the search for knowledge, truth and understanding.

The 9 short stories are about: a desperate mother whose son is sickened by the heavy pollution in Victorian England, a muscular young bare-knuckle fighter, a doctor suffering from memory lapses during which his body is overtaken by a better version of himself, a female balloonist who believes she sees something during an ascent which angers the scientific community, a deranged data gatherer in an asylum, an immigrant participating in civil way enactments to prove his patriotic zeal, a ruler in ancient Egypt conducting bizarre human experiments, a solitary telegraph operator in the Brazilian jungle, and an insect collector in jungles of South Asia and South seas whose theories coincide with those of the more renowned Darwin.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for this interesting and memorable ARC.

What to say about these stories! First of all, this collection is perhaps one of the most exciting that I’ve ever read. Each left me with a visceral reaction, not just an intellectual reaction of “well written” but a gut reaction of “wow”. While the collection is classified as fiction, the stories read as vignettes from real life, moving through history, capturing highlights of human moments on earth.

Mason moves from the life of a 19th century boxer to ancient Egypt, to the jungles of Brazil to France in the time of ballooning in the early 19th century. There is a story set in the South Pacific during the pursuit of the “reality” of evolution using a non-fictional person as lead; another where a man, a doctor, feels his life being subsumed by another (? better) man. There are magical moments, hints of (or more obvious) madness, stark reality, or perhaps alternative reality. So much to read and feel. I am writing this just after finishing the book, with the impact still resonating.

I also recommend reading the author’s afterword. It explains some things about his background that I did not know, which, I believe, are likely powerful influences on his work. It and the acknowledgments also explain the reality behind the titular final story.

Very highly recommended.

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

I loved Daniel Mason's THE PIANO TUNER, and his most recent novel, THE WINTER SOLDIER, was one of my top reads for 2018. His latest effort, the short story collection A REGISTRY OF MY PASSAGE UPON THE EARTH, has moments of brilliance and beauty, but is less compelling than his novels. Part of that may be that Mason's slow-paced, luminous prose is better suited to the immersive experience of the novel, but this collection of stories feels imbalanced and uneven. If there is a center, it seems not to hold. Perhaps a different ordering of the stories would have created a different mood and atmosphere (my choice would have been starting the collection with the haunting "For the Union Dead" rather than the more tense and violent "Death of the Pugilist"). I'll return to re=read several of the stories, but this is a collection I won't be revisiting as a whole and one which I am unlikely to recommend to others who haven't previously read Mason.

"Years later, I would often find that my memory of him conjured the unexpected image of driftwood, which, buffeted enough, grows grey and indistinct."

Throughout this collection there is discovery of the natural world, heartfelt patriotism of an immigrant, a boy who grows up steel-fisted, a mother desperate to cure her son, a man with an obsessive need to record everything he sees during his “passage upon the earth” while for another it is the knowledge, answers to the most pressing questions of humanity itself that he lives his life trying to uncover with strange experiments. There is the story of a woman who rides the wind communicating with her sister as she travels in an air balloon, a lonely telegraph line agent working his post deep in the jungles of Brazil and a country doctor seeking answers for his strange affliction.

Of all the stories, I loved Uncle Teddy’s in For the Union of the Dead. While his passion for American patriotism and civil war reenactments are a thing to ponder, it is his devotion to his brother and his painful past that so moved me. This was a beautiful tale that I thought about long after I finished the collection. It broke my heart wondering what went through his mind time and again on the battlefield, laying there, still as stone. There is a selfless love that made my heart burst.

The Ecstasy of Alfred Russel Wallace is a story about a man who is filled with a hunger for nature that ‘at times felt like lust’. His communication with Charles Darwin, a request, feels like fate. Reading about his expeditions and collection you join him in his fevered state. Anyone who loves nature can well envision the euphoria such surroundings invoke. Not even sickness can put an end to his wonderment at the struggle for survival of every living thing- be it plant, insect, or animal. His mind an active creature itself, he is a man possessed.

The Miraculous Discovery of Psammetichus I is peculiar and at times creepy, how he takes children for his experiments to get to the bottom of bigger questions. A man who “cannot abide stupidity” is himself driven into a frenzy through a search for true knowledge during his rule of Egypt from 664 to 610. It was wildly fascinating, the strange ways men deal with life’s many mysteries.

The title story is about a man born during the year of yellow fever, 1911 in Sergpipe, who as a boy of 14 hears the voice of God and the Virgin Mother. So begins a tale of either God’s servant or a madman who speaks to us from his room at an asylum. He shares with the reader his life exhibit, every vital recorded moment. It is exhausting in his mind and yet interesting.

There are more tales within but these stood out the strongest. I think anyone who loves nature, history and tales of struggle can enjoy this book. It may sometimes feel like a school lesson to some readers but I enjoy learning and immersing myself in the minds of characters vastly different from myself. It is beautifully written with characters whose active minds drive themselves to strange places. It isn’t hard to relate to the mother in On Growing Ferns and Other Plants in Glass Cases, in the Midst of the Smoke of London– terrified of the darkness that would take her child. Desperate to stop the ‘attacks’ that the doctors of London have no cure for. None that work, anyway. It is also easy to comprehend why Céleste would wish to remain forever suspended in the mysteries above the earth and resent men who question her word, and offer up a solution, a male companion as witness to her journey in the tale of a woman who shucks the ordinary life of women, On the Cause of Winds and Waves,&c. Every character within leads a life with some sort of emotional high, based on circumstances or their own active mind, passions. An engaging, intelligently written read.

Publication Date: May 5, 2020

Little, Brown and Company

Each story in A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth is a masterpiece that vividly conveys a historical person's grappling with life's big questions. Each story transported me into a specific time and place. The characters are unforgettable.

Mason's background as a physician and psychiatry inform these stories, each character grappling with challenges biological or mental.

A reluctant pugilist, the product of the "cursed Gemini of Poverty and Fertility," dwells on the moral aspect of his trade. "You boys go out and think you are fighting a boxer but really you're fighting the world," a philosophical man shares.

Alfred Russel Wallace is driven to search for new species, imperiling his health, and independently developing a theory of evolution. I had read about his collection of birds in The Feather Thief by by Kirk Wallace Johnson.

An immigrant demonstrates extreme patriotism, chagrined that he was unable to join the army and die for his adopted country.

In the smoke-filled city of London, a mother desperately seeks a remedy for her son's asthma.

A doctor's temporary lapses in memory appears to be caused by an alternate and more appealing personality.

An agent of the telegraph line lives in isolation in the jungle, forming deep attachments to other agents along the line. This was one of my favorite stories.

A female aeronaute investigates a dark line in the upper atmosphere.

A mental patient is obsessed with collecting data--recording the history of the mundane--which he stitches onto cloth. The story is inspired by the art created by Bispo do Rosario. Voices instructed him to catalog all things on earth. His over 800 works of found art are now celebrated.

I had read Daniel Mason's novel The Winter Soldier and the story stayed in my head, a sure sign of a well-written novel.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased