The premise of this novel sounded right up my alley, but the writing was a bit too flowery for my tastes.

I’m a bit stunned after finishing North Woods. I hope I can’t accurately express my experience with this book… because it really was a full experience.

Full disclosure: this book is outside my usual book picks. I’m not a fan of gore or horror and maybe wouldn’t have picked it up if I had read that it was about a haunted house. My expectations were of a sweeping historical epic about the life of a home in rural western Massachusetts. While in many ways it was just that, the grim stories were so unsettling and unexpected, I wondered what I had gotten myself into. I bring this up because it’s what I would want to know when considering this book.

North Woods is indeed creepy and gory, but it’s also beautiful and tender. As a sensitive person, I have always felt keyed into the history of a home, the way people and time can layer upon itself in the same space. It’s fascinating and a worthy main character! The relationships, trauma, memories - all of it - settle into the floorboards to tell a full story over time. Daniel Mason is obviously a brilliant author and offered us a gift in this book.

As far as pacing, I felt like there were parts that rambled and lacked a cohesive thread but it all tied up well in the last few chapter, which were just stunning. I maybe have never experienced such a satisfying conclusion as I did in the last few pages of North Woods. Definitely worth getting through the unexpected creepiness to be gifted such a beautiful ending!

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy.

Last night during a thunderstorm, I finished Daniel Mason’s North Woods, without question the most stunning, memorable novel I’ve read in the past several years, and I have read many excellent ones. Reading took me longer than expected, not because it was tedious reading—quite the opposite, in fact. Mason tells the stories of residents who inhabited a remote Massachusetts home, one after another, over several centuries.

Fleeing a young woman’s unwanted marriage to a Puritan minister twice her age, a pair of lovers build the original hut in the forest where their Puritan pursuers won’t find them. Following these unnamed young lovers, an elderly woman devotes herself to caring for an ailing young mother and baby dropped off by Indian captors. Charles Osgood, a veteran of the early years of the French and Indian War, creates an apple orchard from a single apple tree found growing near the hut. After he resumes his military career twenty years later during the Revolutionary War, his spinster daughters take over the orchard, living there alone. More residents follow, including landscape painter W. H Teale, an escaped slave named Esther and her baby, the Farnsworths, who dream of converting the home to a money-making hunting lodge, their daughter Lillian and her two children, Lillian’s grown son Robert, and still others. Not only the residents change, but also the house changes, experiencing periods of expansion and renovation, periods of decay.

Repeatedly, I found myself thinking Mason could not top the section I had just completed. Each time he told the story of a new individual or family, he proved me wrong. Short segments turned into longer segments. Visitors came to the home, some with fraudulent or evil intent, some with secret lives, some with research purposes. Slowly these stories of fascinating lives, lived over centuries, began to intersect in unexpected ways.

Amid the traditional narrative threads, Mason intersperses less traditional methods of storytelling, such as a captivity narrative scribbled in margins, notes for a future book, ballads, proverbs and sayings, a series of letters from one friend to another, a psychiatrist’s case notes on a schizophrenic patient, and a column from True Crime.

This is a story of individuals, couples, and families, of dangers, successes, obsessions, varying passions, personal jealousies, items lost and found, and amateur and professional research pursuits. It is a story of the natural world and the supernatural. As the title hints, North Woods is more than the story of the people who live on the land. It is also the story of the land, itself, and the changes it undergoes for the better or worse, whether wrought by nature or by mankind.

Captivating as North Woods is, readers who prefer fast, easy reads may want to skip this one. On the other hand, anyone who savors beautiful writing and who loves complex, meticulously planned, multifaceted novels should buy a copy immediately or join the local library’s wait list. Mason gifts us with much to love. As for me, as soon as I closed my completed ebook, I wanted to open it again. I have used an Audible credit to listen as I follow along with the text. Daniel Mason’s North Woods merits a second reading. It is that good!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House for an advance reader copy of Daniel Mason’s highly recommended latest.

North Woods is one of those books that is almost impossible to review and put into a category because it is a unique read. The story centers around a house in the woods in New England. We follow the stories of the people that pass through the house and the patch of land over the course of decades and generations. This is a book about connections, a sense of place, history, and the passage of time. Daniel Mason has written a beautiful novel and writes in the most enchanting and lyrical way.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Random House for this ARC.

The summary for this novel is so perfect that I can't really think of much to add. Picture a little house in the New England woods and all the stories the house and the woods could tell you. The house would tell you stories of lovers, families, and feuds. The land would tell you stories of what is planted, grown, and buried. The house grows and shrinks with additions and demolitions. Bugs, birds, and animals mate, migrate, and go extinct. Time marches on and the chapters lay bare a myriad of horrors both natural and manmade (sometimes woman-made.)

Beginning in the mid-1700s and spanning to a modern-day/near-future digital rendering of the space, this little spot in the woods is full of stories that had my heart breaking and my jaw dropping. North Woods is as much an ode to nature as it is a series of character studies, and I had a "that makes sense" epiphany when I read Daniel Mason's author bio at the end of the novel, learning that he is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Stanford University.

I have not read any of Mason's other work but now I've got to check out some of his other novels: The Piano Tuner, A Far Country, The Winter Soldier, and (Pulitzer Prize finalist) A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth.

Have you read any books by Daniel Mason?
Is North Woods on your TBR?

I love the premise of this book..
It’s the story of a house..in the forests of New England.. and the many occupants who lived there throughout many, many years.
It’s also as much about the land and nature as the people in the story.
Some really beautiful writing and the story is magical but also has topics of occult, madness, ghostly presence… but most of all connections across time.

It was a slow read for me.. I had put this down at one point and just recently picked it back up.. I’m glad I did!

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for the ARC!

The story begins in the wild, forested land of Western Massachusetts. First there was the land, then the people arrived over hundreds of years. Each person was affected by the land but also affecting the land through their actions, dreams, and relationships. A small hut appears on the land and gradually morphs into something bigger, but necessarily better. It contains all that was and will be while remaining true to the land it sits upon. The only permanence is change and the cycle of the natural world.

Each chapter is a jewel of a vignette. Sometimes there is tragedy, comedy, wonder and terror. Sometimes there is all four in a single story. Yet always there is compassion and beautiful prose that mirrors what has been lost and what may yet be preserved. Highly recommended. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher of providing this extraordinary title.

First of all, the order of the writing in this book is borderline magical. This is the tales of one house in the North Woods beginning with the Puritans and ending in our current time. It is also told over the course of the twelve months of the year, addressing the seasons.

It is more of a collection of short stories of those that inhabit the North Woods. When one story/chapter ends they are gone, but we see into the lives and story of the next person. I really liked the format of this book.

I'm not a short story gal, never have, and while this didn't feel specifically like a short story book exactly it still really kind of was. I think the reason I don't love short stories is because I only get to live with those characters a short amount of time, and I want 300 pages with them instead of 40.

In this book there were some stronger stories that called to me than others, but overall, I felt somewhat distant from the book. Perhaps because of all the story breaks?

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the advance e-book.

Daniel Mason's new novel is a very special treat for reader. It unfolds over twelve stories that take place on the same piece of land. Imagine sitting on your house and stop and wonder who was before you and so on and so on. Each story is filled with beautiful writing and really gives you a feel for the land as well as the people. It was one of those novels that I woudn't want to finish in one sitting. I really enjoyed reading a story and putting it down and refelcting on the space I was occupying imagining who was there before be and what their life was like. This would be a really fun book for a book clube to see which story touched each member and why. Truly and smart and top notch read that profoundly touched me. Thank you to #netgalley and #randomhouse for the ARC

North Woods is an extraordinary novel: epic, evocative, enthralling. The history, the people, the environment all come to life through the well-chosen, perfect words of author Daniel Mason. It’s a simple premise, the story of events occurring in a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries, beginning with two young lovers fleeing from a Puritan colony.

Through Mason’s masterful writing, including some enticing poetry, we journey through the history of the entire country and come to realize the past is always present. Through memory? Through fate? Through magic? We meet so many people and learn so much about the many ways they live and love, their desires, their baser needs, their secrets, their pain. About links formed and links severed. About love and hope, revenge and meanness, madness. See how events happening around them, societal mores, happenstance affect their lives and their futures.

North Woods is one of the most unique books I have read in a long while. Such a simple premise but so richly full of emotion and life through story after story, expertly woven into one long, delicious thread. North Woods is so different, so unusual and so satisfying. I highly recommend this must-read. Thanks to Random House Publishing Group for providing an advance copy of North Woods via NetGalley. I voluntarily leave this review; all opinions are my own.

*4-4.5 stars

Instead of a family saga, this novel of historical fiction is the story of a house in the North Woods of Massachusetts and the people who lived in it over the centuries, told in vignette-style. I enjoyed the beautiful descriptive writing and the vivid, eccentric characterizations--even some ghosts! I only wish Mason had included a few dates to anchor the plot's movement through time more clearly. Otherwise the storyline kept me totally riveted. I can see why I am hearing rumbles of a Pulitzer Prize for this novel!

I received an arc from the author and publisher via NetGalley. Many thanks! My review is voluntary and the opinions expressed are my own.

This is the story of a tract of land, its evolution over time, and the people who lived on it and made it their home. In "North Woods", the ghosts are very real, and haunt the present with an active hand.

Sometimes the stories were too short. I wanted to know many of the characters better, and as the book came to a close, time seemed to accelerate, leaving some of them half-known and lightly sketched.

This is a book for anyone who has felt a deep connection with a place and for all of us with a commitment to saving the wild places for the future.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for my free gifted copy of Daniel Mason’s newest book North Woods. In exchange I offer my unbiased opinion.

Trust me, this book will be on all the award lists and best of 2023 lists for its gorgeous writing and imaginative and unique storytelling. North Woods is about the land, its cabin and those who inhabit the property over the course of hundreds of years. Told as vignettes we read the connections we make to the past, present and future. My favorite reads are interconnected stories and this book was truly masterclass.

If you’re looking for a fall book to transport you to another time, place and way of life look no further.
Book publishes today, September 19, 2023. Don’t miss out!

In the first story in North Woods, Daniel Mason’s beautifully written love story for the land, we meet a rebellious young couple escaping from their restrictive Puritan village. They seek refuge in the Massachusetts woods, where they build a cabin to shelter them. The book then follows the story of that cabin, the surrounding land, and the series of people who come to inhabit it through the years and the adventures they encounter. North Woods is a history, a character study, and a plea for responsible stewardship of the land. It is unusual in its structure and content. Not my usual reading, but beautiful prose from a Pulitzer Prize winner. I thank NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy for review.

The North Woods by Daniel Mason is beautiful, lyrical reflection on the power and mystery of place. In a series of connected short stories, Mason explores the people who have made a place their home and, in doing so, reminds us that we live with history and those that came before us are present in the spaces where we live. This book will stay with me for a long time!

My thanks to NetGalley for the e-ARC. All opinions expressed are my own.

What an interesting book. I wasn’t sure what to expect but it was unique in so many ways. The main character is a home in western MA and the plot revolves around the many owners of the home through the centuries. The writing is just beautiful and the details of the flora and fauna provide a rich background. The book is broken up into many short stories, revealing the owners and visitors over the years. Some of these are particularly memorable and intertwined but some seemed to churn along slowly. Add in some ghosts, magic, murders and poetry and it became a bit too baffling. I know Mason is a celebrated and talented writer, but this book just didn’t connect for me.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for this advance reader copy, in exchange for an honest review. North Woods is a story about history— specifically the history of a particular patch of land in New England and its many inhabitants over the years, ranging from Puritan times to murder and mystical animals.

This story was such a beautiful, lyrical collection of stories about the nature around us that we often take for granted. The story itself doesn’t have a propulsive plot but, rather it seems like the land is the plot and the main character, all wrapped in one, with the human characters taking second stage. The story touches on many sensitive subjects and weaves them in seamlessly to the larger book. It does take some investment to get into the book, as it is a bit of a slow start; but it is definitely worth the effort! Mason’s writing is beautiful and the structure is unique, I’m sure it will stick with me for some time to come.

I’d recommend this book to fellow readers and literary fiction fans!

Thank you to net galley for giving me an e-arc of North Woods by Daniel Mason. It is very rare indeed that a novel of this caliber is written. The language beautifully poetic and rich with imagery. It felt entirely like something written out of time. This will be a story I revisit throughout the years. Best read all year.

Gorgeous writing - stunning writing - about connections spanning hundreds of years in a house in the north woods. Have you ever take a tour through an old house or even been in a truly OLD house and said - “if these walls could talk…” (imagine the stories they could tell). This book does just that. Connection to each other, a community, and the land and the house - all described in a way that was complex and almost ethereal in the way it captured my spirit. Thanks to the publisher for gifting me a copy.

All homes have histories, and North Woods tells the story of one of them through the lives of the people that called it home spanning hundreds of years.

Honestly, I don’t think you need to know much else than that. Maybe it’s important to know this book has no true plot, and yet, each resident stands out for their own reason - there’s murder, there’s a seance, there’s a stalking animal… and yet the point of all of this is each residents connection to the earth, to the house itself, and how the outside world perceives the prior residents. This is a story of rebirth and how we live on.

I really enjoyed this. There are some interesting things happening here structurally and I’m excited to grab a finished copy to explore, but I’m very grateful to @randomhouse to read this prior to its publication on Tuesday! I was mesmerized by the prose and storytelling and think will probably never forget this book (and I forget a lot of books).


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