How romantic! I loved how each chapter made you travel from one to another. I will definitely be buying a physical copy to add to my library. Don’t miss out on this one like I almost did.

This was such a remarkable book. I enjoy novels that are different from the norm, and having a location be the primary "character" throughout was a stroke of genius. The varying writing styles, unique characters, and the inclusion of flora and fauna in the plot added a dimension to the story that I don't know that I've encountered elsewhere. I enjoyed it from start to finish, and it's one of my top books of the year, if not THE top book.

Daniel Mason has become one of my favorite authors, especially after I read the stories in A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth. And now he has performed his magic again in this volume of interconnected stories linked by a site in northwestern Massachusetts and a small colonial era dwelling built there. North Woods tells the stories of the land and its natural and human inhabitants over the course of over two and a half centuries.

In stories that are historical, sometimes quasi-humorous, sometimes almost gothic, frequently sad in the details of their human lives, Mason writes with his trademark prose of the natural world that underlies all the human activity. The connections between these stories may seem tenuous at times but they are actually strong, as strong as the land itself.

I strongly recommend North Woods to anyone who enjoys short stories, rich characters, and beautiful descriptions of nature and seasonal changes in western Massachusetts. It also shows the flow of history in one area from colonial times to contemporary times as seen through the people and the land.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for access to this book. This review is my own.

This novel is like an archaeological excavation. Every time an artifact is discovered, we get a fragment of a story, and when all of the fragments are put together we see what has happened in the setting of the book over a long period of time. I’d guess that anyone with a passion for natural and human history would love this novel.

I almost DNFd this in the first third. I was intrigued enough by the premise to keep going, and the middle third had some engaging characters and events. The last third lost me again. I can’t really get excited about spores and blights and insects reproducing.

The structure of this novel is original, but it felt long – it took me more than three weeks to read. It’s a hybrid of fact and fiction, of past and present, of living and dead. The author uses various writing forms. I wasn’t crazy about the songs and poems sprinkled throughout. I like my non-fiction told in non-fiction form. I like my fiction to be centred on characters I can get emotionally involved with. The setting really is the main character here, and I wasn’t that attached to it.

If you loved Hamnet or Lincoln in the Bardo you might enjoy North Woods.

A truly original and clever novel. Beautiful and haunting tale of how generations were connected to the yellow house in the woods.

This book has been buzzy for awards, and after reading it I very much understand why. It traces the history of a house in rural Massachusetts, starting with its establishment as a cabin by a pair of teenage lovers fleeing their Puritan settlement, all the way through the present day and beyond. In between there are murders, seances, a new breed of apple, a mountain lion, joy, and despair. The story is told through multiple formats, including songs, one side of a correspondence of letters, and an article from a true crime magazine. It’s creative, compelling, and filled with callbacks to the past both large and small in a way that makes it rewarding to be an attentive reader of. I very much liked it and strongly recommend it.

I presented a 3 hr seminar at Writers on the Sound earlier this month. I recommended North Woods and read sections of the text to the audience. I am pleased and impressed with the quality of the literary natural history.. Very few books have been able to achieve this which I compare favorably with John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath.
The style of the novel, almost experimental, will make it difficult for some readers. The supernatural elements seemed a bit too forced. And I never enjoy long epistolary sections. Overall, this is a tremendous addition to modern literature.

I have enjoyed Mason's previous work and this one blew me away. The star of the show is the setting - the forests of western Massachusetts and one yellow dwelling, from colonial times and beyond. We have episodes, some vignettes, some longer chapters that are fascinatingly unique yet held together by this setting.

There's adventure, history, nature, agriculture, art and literature, true crime. It's funny, it's heartfelt, it's poignant, with man's arrogance over the land a constant over the centuries. It's hard to describe the delight in North Woods without giving too much away. A "tale of change" indeed.

My thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the ARC. North Woods was published in September...get your copy now!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for the ARC of this book I exchange for an honest review.

This strange novel has entered the ranks to be one of my top books of the year.

North Woods, by Daniel Mason is a slow burning, haunting, non-plot-driven, non-linear novel containing some of the most beautiful nature writing I have read in a long time.

The book follows a plot of land in New England through time, in a sequence of increasingly-connected vignettes. A variety of characters, some likeable and some hate-able, live on or pass through this land, ranging from puritans, to a psychic, a beetle (yes the insect), an apple farmer, a lobotomist, a botanist, etc. All of their stories are simultaneously mundane and fascinating, and they all weave together with details and traces connecting one story to the next. There are so many subtle links between them that I am sure this book would stand up to rereading.

The forest and land that each of these stories take place on is a crucial part of the story, and the nature writing describing it is vivid and magical.

One of the most unique novels I have read in a while, I highly recommend this book!

I loved how this was a story of a house and it's many occupants throughout the years. The prose is lovely, the sadistic twists are appreciated, and the descriptions created such vivid imagery! I can't wait to check out more of Daniel Mason's works!

“North Woods” - (5 Stars) (Pub Date:9/19/2023) by Daniel Mason is an astoundingly rendered winding story with a core narrative based in a single place and offshoots of tales about the varied and eventually interconnected individuals that move through and inhabit the place. In the North Woods of Massachusetts you meet Puritan lovers, captives, emotionally complex sisters, estranged lovers, a painter, a poet, a charlatan psychic, a lecher, a schizophrenic (or is he?) an arborist, a widow, a pissed off big cat, amorous bugs, a woman fleeing to safety, and then the end to begin again. .

Good Things: This book has three things that I love in a good story, all in one place. It has a setting and sense of place that is a character itself, and in this case is described using some of the most intensely beautiful descriptive language I’ve ever read. It has finally outdone the descriptive nature and place language of “My Absolute Darling” by Gabriel Tallent (and with none of the emotionally scarring imagery of the latter). It has a solidly good “creep” factor that has come the closest of any writer to hinting at my own beliefs about “souls on a blade of grass” and the energy of each individual. And finally…the characters, good lord the characters and their individuality in the shared space through time are amazing and their interconnectedness is subtle and beyond clever.

Final Thoughts: I will lay awake tonight thinking about how this book and’s format and structure closely mirror a fern, or moreso, the pattern left by the beetle as she tunnels through the elm, sending off offspring in beautiful patterns from the core of her tunneling. I will remember the twins and their welcoming nature with goosebumps on my forearms. I will try to not think about the concept of the North Woods and its similarities to American Horror Story - Murder House or Hotel California because I feel like there is a shared pattern to these stories, but I don’t want to cheapen the book with my comparisons. And I will think about the Big Cat and the fife, and the blue car, and the apples. I want to taste one.

As always, I appreciate the opportunity afforded me to have an early read by netgalley and Random House. The opinions in this review are expressly those of ButIDigressBookClub and are intended for use by my followers and friends when choosing their next book. #butidigress #butidigressbookclub #northwoods #randomhouse #danielmason #netgalley #netgalleyreviewer #arc #arcs #thatcovertho

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Review Shared on Goodreads - www.goodreads.com/leah_cyphert_butidigressbookclub
Publishing Review 10/07/2023

Enjoyed how the house became a character in the story and what it represented to the people who lived in it.

This novel offers the history of a single piece of land over the course of a few hundred years through the increasingly interwoven stories of its inhabitants. I found it unique and encaptivating and would highly recommend. It is a fascinating look at the way things change and the way things stay the same, and how the past can be read literally and figuratively on a place.

4.5 stars
This is a story of a house in the New England woods. And of the people who inhabit it, from the time of the Puritans until the present. And of the cycles of nature and of human nature. Of the changes wrought by people and by nature itself. There's innocence, there's violence, there's beauty, there's evil, there's a little bit of the mysterious. Very different and very good.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a free e-ARC of this book.

North Woods is an epic novel that defies definition. It is a book of connected stories about a plot of land in North Massachusetts and all those who inhabit it, both big and small. This is a book about building up and tearing down: man builds, and nature destroys; nature builds, and man destroys. It is a book about people from generation to generation, some who leave this land, some who never do. And it is about the ghosts that remain.
Mason characterizes the minute virus that kills the chestnut trees with the same depth of understanding that he details the characters in his book. And those characters all have strong personalities, some more menacing than others. Environmentalists will love this book, with its vivid descriptions of the flora and fauna.
The author quite successfully uses different voices to tell these stories. He utilizes letters, diary entries, songs, true crime reporting (a la Raymond Chandler), and regular narratives effectively. As the novel progresses, the voices become more contemporary.
I repeat, this book defies definition. It is one of the best I’ve read this year.

Daniel Mason takes us on a journey through time within one house. Stretching from Puritan lovers escaping into the woods until the fall of the Anthropocene, Mason tells 12 stories with interstitial links that explode into a cacophony of humanity. The novel unfolds through narrative, letters, medical charts, poems, real estate listings, and more in a way that is almost brash but manages to work every single time. Along the way we see warring narratives of religion and myth, wilderness and cultivation, familial love and romantic love, apples and literally anything else. So much of life is crammed into this book and into this little corner of Massachusetts and shows that while time passes, home and sanctuary remain. Oh, and ghosts.

This was an impressively written book. It's effectively a book of short stories which span decades and are connected in unexpected ways to a place - a home in Massachusetts. There are historical, ecological, supernatural and human elements to these stories, some of which are so engrossing that I was sad when it ended. The place - both the physical home as well as surrounding lands - create the unity and tie the stories together. The description of the trees, the leaves and the smells are evocative and make it easy to imagine the place. I haven't read anything by Daniel Mason before, but this work is an achievement and makes me want to read his other work.

I loved this so, so much. I started and stopped a handful of times, thinking that the writing of the first chapter would be the writing throughout (and it was hard!) - but that was just part of Daniel Mason's brilliance. I loved following the little cabin in the North Woods over the centuries. Alice and Mary were my favorites, and after their section I was HOOKED. Loved.

North Woods was a super unique novel- I don’t think I have ever read anything quite like it before. It is multiple stories in one about the woods and a cabin and the nature, creatures and humans who all have occupied the land throughout many, many years. The writing was gorgeous and this is just one of this books that will impact you and stick with you, always. I look forward to reading more from this author!

This book is fantastic. A wonderful story about a place, North Woods, and all the fascinating characters that inhabit it during centuries. The prose is flawless and the structure very smart. I was drawn in from the first sentence. It is a very atmospheric novel that I will read again for sure.