Though this was undeniably well written, I couldn't really get into it. It moved too slowly for me and while the language was great, the plot really meandered for me.

I wasn't expecting to have enjoyed this novel as much as I did. This was a very original story and I loved how each story flowed into the next. I was engaged with every "story" within the novel and especially loved the story of the schizophrenic son, Robert. The ending made it all worthwhile because I wasn't sure how Mason would wrap up the story.

Ahhh, this book. It spans centuries but stays within one forested area of Massachusetts, and within one house that is rebuilt, passed down to the next generations, is abandoned, crumbles away, is rebuilt again, and the cycle starts over. And the same can be said for the forest and apple orchard surrounding the home -- in this book the only constant is that everything changes... and regenerates.

Most likely a book I'll remember as the one that took me nearly 5 months to finish, reading one chapter at a time. It reads like short stories, something I usually don't care for, but it suited me here. I loved the first few stories, some in the middle not as much -- the characters and the writing were so unusual, I didn't always like where I was taken. The final two stories I absolutely adored. This was a unique experience to say the least.

My thanks to NetGalley for my advanced copy.
P.S. I am not a fan of the book cover.

North Woods is a unique novel of the eco-history of a woods in Western Massachusetts over the years from early colonial settlement to the present. The subject is a particular spot in these north woods and to a lesser degree, the individuals that spend a portion of their lives, from days to many years, in those very woods. There is a raw and primitive beauty that draws these people and yet leaves them affected in strange and often unsettling ways. The woods themselves as well are changed and affected by the efforts of the people to tame them.
The book shows the ravages that people and nature can play on the land bringing disease and disaster. It also seems to illustrate a dichotomy between the almost naive nature of this beautiful place and the savagery and baseness of humanity. It is a haunting read filled with lovely language and description, but a sense of mystery and unease as well. I would recommend this title to readers who are interested in nature and man's connection to the natural world. It should also appeal to people interested in unique styles of writing as the author employs different features and methods of bringing this history to the reader.
My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this title.

To everything, turn, turn, turn the page
There is a season, turn, turn, turn the page
And a time to read Daniel Mason’s glorious #NorthWoods under Heaven.
ENCHANTING !

I wanted to love this book so much! The writing was lovely, the setting intriguing and the format unique, but I just couldn’t get into it. I got through a little over 150 pages, but I struggled to find motivation to pick it up. I unfortunately had to add this novel to my short DNF list but don’t let this review stop you from giving it a try! I do feel this would be enjoyed by reader’s who are more interested in multiple plot lines and historical fiction. Hoping I’ll be inspired to pick it up again sometime but unfortunately it just may not be for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for allowing me to read a digital copy in return for my honest review.

I am not a gambler. Slot machines make me tense. I refuse to fill out basketball brackets. I have bought a lottery ticket precisely once in my life.

The one thing I am willing to gamble on is a book, especially if I can even the odds. Case in point: I like old houses and New England, so when I read that Daniel Mason’s North Woods followed the inhabitants of a New England home across four centuries, I decided to roll the literary dice.

Unlike that lotto ticket, North Woods paid off. Gorgeously written, thought-provoking and surprisingly emotional, it’s one of my favorite titles of the year.

As promised, North Woods is the story of a house. It’s not famous, or sinister, or architecturally significant. It’s just…a house. There’s nothing remarkable about it, except to the people who live there. For them, it’s home, as distinctive and extraordinary as the inhabitants themselves.

The story begins when two young lovers flee their Puritan settlement for the Massachusetts woods. With each chapter, new people come to their cabin in the forest searching for something: sanctuary, redemption, fortune, a fresh start. The sprawling, vividly drawn cast includes a British soldier, a desperate mother, and a true crime reporter, among others. The characters are fallible and funny and vulnerable; while each appears for only one chapter, it’s impossible not to be drawn into their lives.

The story unfurls over centuries in poignant, powerful vignettes. Gradually, connections between characters are revealed – some subtle, some supernatural – but it’s not a typical “haunted house.” Rather, the sense of home is so intrinsic to the story, the past can’t help but echo forward.

This is historical fiction in the deepest sense: a very narrow, very thorough exploration of a singular place. The woods transform alongside the house, from wilderness to orchard to pasture and back again, with the changes chronicled in rich, effortless prose. Whether he’s talking about chestnut blight or the human heart, Mason’s writing is imaginative, precise, and immersive; it’s an absolute pleasure to read.

North Woods is the story of a house. But really, it’s story about what it means to be human: how messy, impermanent, and precious life is. It’s both entertaining and profoundly moving, a feat of writing for fans of George Saunders and Barbara Kingsolver. If there’s such a thing as a sure bet, North Woods is it.

Tales of Change

My favorite rendezvous with a book this year, I was completely unprepared for the affair. 400 years' worth of life for a plot of land– the people, the animals, the plants– completely separate stories told in a myriad of ways– and linking together in one solid symphony. There are books out there with loosely connected ties, and that can be nice… but nothing like this.

The characters in this western Massachusetts woodland setting include Puritan lovers, Native Americans, a British apple orchard farmer, his two spinster daughters, a mountain lion, a slave hunter, a landscape artist ostracized for his lifestyle, two beetles engaged in hot and heavy love-making, a psychic commissioned to communicate with the ghosts of some of the previously mentioned tenants, a mother and her schizophrenic son, a true crimes reporter, and a postgraduate student there to study flowers.

There is so much here– and my guess would have been too much– but Daniel Mason ties everything together beautifully. The voices of these characters, so different in tone and approach, are written so well that you shift with the points of view and trust the author’s touch. The separate pieces here all contribute to the mosaic.

“…she has found 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.” This is the tale of nature’s change, of America’s change. There are ghosts, reminders of their effect on the environment they inhabited.

I have to enthusiastically swear by this odyssey. I followed it up by listening to the audio version on Spotify– very highly recommended, as well.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is an amazing novel covering a broad range of time periods, with all events happening on a single plot of land in the New England woods. The story begins with a couple who ran away from a settler colony and lived in a cabin in the woods by themselves. The characters who follow the initial builders of the cabin add their own pieces to the story. Each generation over the centuries brings their own way of life and leaves their mark on the land.

From the farmer who installed the apple orchard to the elderly sisters who looked after the orchard, even the wildlife has a tale to tell on this piece of land. A mountain lion passes through and leaves its imprint. Beetles come and go. Every one of the inhabitants of this house leaves some part of themselves there, a piece that connects them all, across many centuries. The scope of this novel is incredible, but the story works. It is impossible to put down.

This is the best novel I have read in many years. I was simply entranced by the interconnectedness of all the people, animals, and even the house and land itself. It all ties neatly together and the author's technique is so good that the reader just accepts this all as fact. An absolutely amazing achievement for an author. This book should win lots of awards!

I am grateful to the publisher for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

North Woods is a series of interconnecting stories that all center around the same place and house in the north woods in Massachusetts. All of the stories are told with beautiful prose and are heartbreaking, and at some times even dark, but in the end all tie together to make a statement about the power of connection in the world.

I love the change in prose throughout the book, and the overall feelings of what it means to be human, and what makes a house a “home”, that this book elicits.

This is a book that will stick with me for a long time.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the arc in exchange for my honest review.

Mason covers hundreds of years in his book centered on a cabin in the woods of New England. It begins with lovers running away from their strict Puritan colonial society and finding a place to be themselves. Through the years, the cabin becomes the refuge and home to numerous others. This includes a young man with dreams of an orchard, twin sisters who cannot be parted, a painter and his good friend, a troubled young man, plus ghosts and animals - all with their own struggles and secrets.

The land is the common thread and the plot follows the variety of people who settle in the woods. Mysteries abound and bodies are buried. But the woods are the one constant. The land develops and changes as people inhabit the area and then pass on. Readers are like voyeurs, glimpsing the string of men and women who look to the woods for safe harbor, communing with nature and building a place to call home. But there’s also a sinister element to some of the house’s secrets.

Each resident brings their own needs, attitudes and developments while the land proves its resiliency. This is a haunting tale that demonstrates how ephemeral humans are while the land advances with new inhabitants, new usage and even new growth. The characters come and go; some more engaging than others. It’s possible that my rating was affected by my listening to the audiobook. This may be one of those novels that are better as a close read rather than simply listening to the narrative.

This is a novel about place, about one place, a house in the woods in Western Massachusetts and the land around it, and it's a novel about time. There's an orchard with the best apples you've ever tasted, twin sisters, one with a strong hold over the other, a secret and tragic love affair, a medium who thinks she's a charlatan- until she comes to this house and experiences the ghosts who live here. Over 400 years you see this (changing) house, these changing lands, and the people who live there. When I rate a book, I consider the writing (and this contains lovely poetic writing), but also, is it doing something important or kind of new, and does it take you on a journey? This gets 5 stars with no reservations. I loved this journey. I'll think about this book in the future, as well.

"North Woods" by Daniel Mason was one of my highest-rated reads of 2023. This weaving narrative centers on one house across generations of owners, squatters, renters, and trespassers. I was consistently surprised by Mason's ability to plant seeds throughout the narrative that unexpectedly bloomed into plot points throughout the timeline of the book. This is unlike any other historical fiction novel I've read and I've already recommended it to plenty of library patrons.

A small cabin, a safe haven for a young puritan becomes a welcome place for other living and non living residents. An English soldier is a deserter and finds the cabin and the apple orchard and finds solace. Spinster twins face feast and famine. A crime reporter stumbles up in the cabin and finds a mass grave. A con man, a painter, a panther and a beetle all travel through this cabin. Each person is haunted by it. The cabin is beautiful and eerie. It is a character in itself. The way the author weaves the stories of each character living in the cabin is very different, interesting. It has a spirit of whimsy and magical moments. North Woods by Daniel Mason is such a great story. I really enjoyed the way history and characters can be in the same spot but so many things can be different. Each person sees the same spot so differently. This was a four star read for me. I want to thank Netgalley and the author for my copy for an honest review. It was my pleasure to read and review this book. I have read many books and I just love it when a story has a surprise for me in every page.

A little over my head at times but so beautifully written. I don’t feel like I sat with this long enough and want to go back to reread and take my time. It’s not a book for a quick hit, it needs to be savored!

https://www.berkshireeagle.com/arts_and_culture/books/book-review-daniel-mason-north-woods/article_10b6a578-69ee-11ee-99e9-3f98a1071d6c.html

It's said that if you throw a stone in New England, chances are, you'll hit a haunted house.

That saying bears some truth. While the house may not have actual ghosts haunting its walls, chances are the house you've hit is at least a hundred years old, if not more.

Houses, in New England, and especially here in The Berkshires, in Western Massachusetts, are old. Many are original buildings dating back to the early settlers. Some have the hallmark of old New England expansion — additions built onto the original structure, others added on over time, as families and sometimes wealth grew.
Our houses are haunted by those who lived in them before us, the traces they've left behind. Peel off a layer of wallpaper and you might just find five or six more layers — sunflowers give way to striped patterns and then flowers again. Carpets cover linoleum that must be removed before hardwood floors are revealed. Doorways are marked with lines charting growth with heights, dates and initials — testimonies of those who came before.

Houses are filled with happiness, cheer, despair, heartache and sorrow. Lives are lived, inhabitants come and go and yet the houses remain, outliving those who have called them home. Such is the case of the yellow house at the center of Daniel Mason's "North Woods."

This yellow house, built in the woods of Western Massachusetts, begins its life as a rustic cabin, built by a pair of Puritan runaways, who escape into the woods to love and live in freedom. It is, in its silent existence, the main character of this novel, as it bears witness over the course of three centuries to the people who come and go; the interconnectedness of lives across land and time; the impact of invasive species and of climate change in a single place.

But, we are not peeling back layers of wallpaper or tearing up carpets in this novel. Instead, we are watching the wallpaper be applied and the wooden floors disappear under tiles and carpets. We are there as the layers are applied, the rooms added and the height charts marked on walls. We listen to the music that fills its halls, read the letters as they are written, watch lives and walls crumble in real time as the house reveals its stories, one chapter, one genre at a time.

With this simple cabin, Mason is able to document a fictional [albeit somewhat fact-based] history of New England without having to go too far astray of his ambiguous, yet all to familiar, fictional town of Oakfield. Following the Puritan couple, the cabin hosts a woman and child, captured and taken during the Deerfield Massacre. Left behind by her captors in this cabin with a woman to care for her, she is soon at the mercy of British soldiers who intend to take action against the Native Americans and French who raided Deerfield.

By her tale's end, an apple tree is blooming in the place where a man's body once lay, its roots wrapped around what remains of his rib cage. It's life born from a seed of the apple he ate shortly before his death.

This single tree attracts a British major, who fresh home from battle is obsessed with the fruit of this tree. This obsession will take him and his twin daughters, from the comforts of Albany, N.Y., into the wiles of woods, where he'll turn a cabin into a two story house, start an orchard and carve out a life.

When the American Revolution begins, he'll be called back to arms, leaving the daughters to care for the Osgood Wonders, the apples they tend with love.

Sexaganarian spinsters, Alice and Mary Osgood live in solitude, sleeping in the same bed, reading the same books, composing music together. There have been offers of marriage for one, who, fearing her sisters wrath declines all who show an interest in courtship. There bond is deep, until in their twilight years, a man causes an unrepairable riff.

Take a pause here, oh Berkshire reader, to remember the apple trees, wild and fruit-bearing, encountered on hikes in forests that were once orchards tamed by human hands.

Look to the hilltown of Savoy where Martha Ann Sturtevant and Mary Abbe Pierce, who were the oldest twins in New England from 1929 to 1934. The sisters, who lived together in the homestead where they were born, had only spent a little over six years apart — the length of Martha Ann's marriage (her husband died of a heart condition) and the time that Mary Abbe spent in the hospital for a broken shoulder. Could they have been Mason's inspiration? They could have been. Or maybe it was a different set of nonagenarian twins that held the title before them that spurred this fascinating tale?

But don't pause too long to ponder this, as the sisters have moved on and so has the house, which now sits with a door open; its occupants gone. But the house lives on.

Now comes a catamount that stalks the farm's sheep, left unattended by their former mistresses. It devours its prey in the comfort of the house, leaving carcasses in the dust and must. From there, still seemingly abandoned by all but the ghosts that tiptoe through it in the night, the house will give shelter to woman who has escaped slavery. She'll leave the house with her infant child and an old Bible, which has a similar tale of escape scrawled in the margins of its pages.

The house will be reclaimed, fixed up and lived in again. In a tale told through letters, we learn of a painter, of the Hudson Valley School, who moves to the country to paint after traveling with his dear friend, a writer, who he is in love with. Their forbidden love, reminiscent of the alleged affair of Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne, sputters and is extinguished by society, by distance, by time and in old age, a nursemaid.

But perhaps the pair has found each other in the next world, as a pair of otherworldly, rambunctious lovers torment the next owner's wife, who appears to be the only one is privy to the sounds of them making up for lost time. The house, now swelled in size to that of a great inn and filled with taxidermy and ostentatious hopes of grandeur.

But this is only a small part of the house's great story. The house will live on, as the hopes of the would-be innkeeper are dashed. The house will fall into disrepair as subsequent generations fall on harder times, hoard items and move far away, to California, only to return to the house that waits for them.

In between the tales of men and women, of love and heartbreak, of murder and madness, we watch as the apple orchard fades into the forest; as a mysterious disease arrives on the wind, infecting the chestnut trees; follow the life of insect, as it is born, mates and moves on, boring its way into trees to start the cycle all over again.

Oh, the stories this house could tell, go on and on. The house is abandoned again, wastes away, is rebuilt and so repeats the cycle. There's a pulp fiction crime writer that pays a visit; an actor who makes it a glorious second home. Always, it is there, in some form, even in its last days, the yellow house is there.

And so are its ghosts. Some are as real as you and I, living their lives in the next plane of existence — tending apples; finding love, living a life intended, existing in bliss. Others are merely memories, fading along with the house which is collapsing in on itself; ferns growing through its floorboards, warblers living in the rotting walls and in the chimney.

And all along the way, we are reminded how small this vast world actually is. Here, in this one little corner of New England, the lives lived in this rustic cabin turned yellow house, intersect without any of them really knowing it — the past impacting the future, connecting lives in the strangest of ways.

Mason delivers a deliciously written history of New England, that is so well crafted, it is easy to imagine this house existing in many small towns here in the Berkshires and its diaspora. These are tales that could belong to you and me, to our ancestors and to our children. They are tales well worth reading.

Northwestern Massachusetts, an apple sapling, a yellow house and many centuries encompassing the Osgoods who arrived in America, leaving war behind to raise apples to twin daughters always tending the apples, to Anastasia Rossi, née Edith Simmons, a mystique poseur, who couples with a certain Mr. Farnsworth in Eden, “the Serengeti of Massachusetts. They, and many others, will all visit and leave something behind in the yellow house.

The Mountains of Western Massachusetts are”a place of extraordinary wealth… and backwoods poverty. Gilded ballrooms…and clapboard shanties. Summer retreats of artists, poets, captains of industry…and dark forests where the hunter stalks.” Stick with it, each chapter introduces a new set of characters and inhabitants. The prose is exquisite, the notion inventive and like an ouroboros the stories link back and forward to each other. Expect to spend time, to read and reread - it commands your attention - it deserves it.

Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for a copy.

Courtesy of Random House and Netgalley, I received the ARC of North Woods by Daniel Mason. This fictional history focuses on a western Massachusetts home and it's inhabitants, from colonial Puritans to contemporary travellers. With ever changing literary styles and poetic language to reflect the varied eras, Mason beautifully and reverently describes the wooded areas, their changing seasons, and years of evolution, growth, blight, and renewal, as well as the generations interconnected by the yellow house. Be prepared for surprises in this amazing saga!

I was initially put off by the name and cover of the book. I thought it would be a book about the woods. A boring book about the woods. I was so wrong. This book is lyrical and enthralling. The old adage " if trees could talk" would sum up the story. From Puritan times to the present, all that that one little corner of New England has seen. The interesting way that Daniel Mason writes about these different times it what makes this book so great. Letters, a doctor's notes are just a few of the enthralling methods of imparting the story to us, the reader. I loved this book! Thank you NetGalley for an ARC.

What to say? I slogged through this and some nights it helped get me to sleep quickly. Ouch. The concept of telling short stories through the ownership of one house and a beautiful natural setting was clever and intriguing. I thoroughly enjoyed some of the early sections and the final piece. But oh, so many parts in between were just tedious, much too drawn out and yet left me not feeling like I knew the characters. Those longer sections could have been used to much greater effect. And the writing itself, I do love beautifully crafted language, but in a novel the language needs to serve the story. The writing here felt overly affected and pretentious. I can imagine the phrase “soaring literary work” being applied to this. Sadly, not for me. But as others have said this wasn’t his best work, I will try another of his titles. Thanks to NetGelley for a preview copy.