WOW! this book is so good, it defies description. The central theme is a house and the families who live in it and the stories that live through it. Twelve families, twelve months, twelve stories that span history beginning with a Puritan couple. Each family will come to love their home and community for differing reasons, but the stories themselves will cast the reader into the woods alongside them. Daniel Mason is an accomplished author but for me, this book is the best in his library of titles.

This is a book like none other. It's about a house in western Massachusetts built within the woods. The woods is the common element and the characters come and go as the story spans several hundred years. The stories vary from both funny, fascinating and macabre. The individual story lines are captivating and addictive. The writing is lush and the woods are described in great detail as seen through each characters eyes. You can feel the breeze, taste the apples. The story is told with narrative, poems, almanac entries and illustrations. Not all story lines are tied up nicely before moving on. I am stunned by the beauty of this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for this advanced readers' copy.

𝙏𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙖 𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙣 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙛𝙚𝙘𝙩 𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙡𝙩𝙝, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙡𝙚𝙩 𝙝𝙞𝙢 𝙖𝙨𝙨𝙚𝙧𝙩 𝙖𝙜𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙨𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙜𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙡 𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙤𝙣, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙛𝙞𝙣𝙙 𝙨𝙪𝙘𝙝 𝙖 𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙖𝙘𝙘𝙪𝙨𝙚𝙙 𝙤𝙛 𝙙𝙚𝙫𝙞𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙮, 𝙤𝙧 𝙚𝙧𝙧𝙤𝙧, 𝙤𝙧 𝙢𝙖𝙙𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙨.

The novel begins with lovers chased from the village by its people, running fast through forest, valleys, fern groves, and bogs using even bear caves so as not to be discovered. Soon hidden from England from the Colony, it is nature who shelters them. Because they are young, they thrive and feed on the earth’s bounty as they seek their future in the north woods. She is with the one they called ungodly, and he beside the beauty who flees a widower she does not love. This is their origin story, and those who come after are filled with and troubled by love, obsession, wonder, jealousy, ‘madness’, loneliness, wild creatures and haunts.

We soon meet widower Charles Osgood and his wonder, the apples, that set off his fight against the label of lunatic. As he takes his incurable self to the forest, he finds a home for his twin daughters Mary and Alice and for his passion, his apples, to grow. Mary and Alice’s tale is a different sort of love, one wrapped up in loyalty, jealousy, and resentment. One is always the fairest, and the other in shadow. Is it true of all sisters? Mary is clever, but it is Alice who the world takes note of. Nothing will ever define their days better than their father’s apples, nor will anything separate them. Until one begins to dream of something new, something more. The sisters moved me, it’s such a bitter fruit to swallow, what happens but I understand the threats that appear and the pain that is born. There are tragedies, secrets, tears, darkness, insects that destroy, rough winters, horrifying medical cures and many deaths. Time and people alter north woods, is it always a wheel of progress? It is a place to revere, a home that heals, a world unto itself but it can also be a grave, it can suffocate. Some secrets go quietly into the ground.

A man who retrieves enslaved people, for a high price, is on the hunt when strange forces surprise him, perfect justice for a man with ‘law’ on his side. A poet and artist share beautiful, moving intimate letters that are a risk to their reputation and happiness. A woman who tends to an aging man comes to love him deeply, selfishly. There is even a séance but is it real, is it trickery? The deepest love of all that nearly ripped out my heart is the tale of Robert S. and his mother Lilian. I was choking on Lilian’s fear for her son and the struggle in Robert’s mind, beautifully represented. The ending of his life was moving, what he sent to his sister, what he hoped she would finally understand.

A lust inspiring fireside, an amorous beetle, a plague, prison pen pals, beastly attacks, a True Crime column… this book is something special. I didn’t think I would be as enchanted as I was. Lilian made me an emotional mess, how can there be horror and eerie encounters and beautiful forms of love in one novel? I am still pondering what is left of it all? What will be left of us, our people, our earth? Time takes.

Yes, read it. What a divine read!

Published September 19, 2023

Random House

I loved the concept of this book and it had some gorgeous nature writing. Agree with other reviewers that it's really worth it to soldier through until the last couple stories - I love when a thing comes together. I wish I could say I was completely enthralled throughout... I was not. Some plotlines were more engaging/to my liking than others. But, I love the concept of the house as the centerpiece and that kept me going.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC.

One of the best books I've read in a long time. Writing was great, plot was unique and engaging, I loved the continuity of the stories, and how they all tied together at the conclusion. I was pleased to know that they were all "at peace" in the end.

To call these linked stories would do this sweeping novel injustice. The stories are rooted to the ground, overgrowing one another to create a marvelous forest -- a wondrous palimpsest. The novel's fertile ground is a single house in the woods of Western Massachusetts, inhabited by first one soul then another and another. All iterations feature richly drawn characters -- Puritan lovers gone wild, an English soldier utterly infatuated with apples, his spinster twin daughters torn by passion and envy. Further inhabitants -- humans, as well as a mountain lion on the prowl and a ravenous beetle -- claim proceeding chapters. This novel looks at history and the cycles of nature, asking where do we fit in, what are our roles -- during and after our lives? What are our passions, what do we do with them, and how do these actions affect this place we inhabit? I was totally enthralled, beginning to end. Highly recommend.

[Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for an opportunity to read an advanced reader copy and share my opinion of this book.]

A rare 5 stars!

North Woods by Daniel Mason is a treasure. A treasure of how we as people fit into the natural world. Not all these tales of the inhabitants of this house in rural north Massachusetts are happy ones, in fact very few are, but they speak to the heartache and challenges of living… of loving and loss, disappointments and personal obsessions. That really spoke to me.

The writing in each era is different, allowing the stories to unfold at different paces and with a different emotional impact. I found myself brought to tears more than once, which rarely happens for me.

And I can’t end this review without saying that the descriptions of the natural world on this small plot of land were a wonder. I can’t wait until the next time I spend time in nature with these lush descriptions forefront in my mind.

I recommend this to anyone who enjoys literary fiction and descriptions of the natural world we live in. I’ll be recommending it to my book group as soon as it is available.

Many thanks to Random House Books and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for this honest, unbiased review.

The stories of many lives, connected by a small cabin in the woods.

At the beginning of North Woods, the reader meets two young people who are in love and have run away from the Puritan colony where they lived. They make a life in a small, isolated cabin in the woods of Western Massachusetts. Years pass, and others (not all of them human) stumble upon the cabin and use it as perhaps as a refuge, or a place to start a new life. With language appropriate to the times in each which character lives, and the connection to the natural world in all its beauty as well as the ties to those who have come before, this is a well-crafted tale with fully developed characters, with joy and tragedy, beauty and ugliness. I found that I enjoyed it best by reading bits at a time, sipping rather than gulping, but others may prefer to fully immerse themselves in the saga. I enjoyed the beautiful use of language, and meeting such a mixed bag of quirky, not always likeable but assuredly interesting characters. The pace is not swift, and in many ways it is like a series of short stories with a central point of intersect. Readers of authors like Elizabeth Strout and William Trevor might want to give this book a try, Many thanks to NetGalley and Random. House Publishing Group for allowing me access to this novel full of passion and life.

What a magical story!! We are along for the ride in following all of the people and families that reside in this special house in the remote North Woods, however long they may have been there.

I particularly enjoyed when we were following the residents in the more historical time periods- the Osgoods being my favorite. The setting was perfect and the Mary and Alice story was my favorite.

I like how the writing style evolved with the time period as well, there was never any disconnect about the time period we were in. Mason was able to really set the scene each time with the writing style alone.

As we get closer and closer to present day we see more how time has changed the land and the house - be it due to blight or disease of the trees, or mold in the house or trees falling on the roof. I thought this also served as a good, gentle indicator of time passing.

I feared that once we left a certain set of residents that we would be done with them forever, but the author manages to weave their stories and experiences into the more modern times as well, which was very well done.

This is historical fiction how I like it best, and an excellent release in the genre!

I received an eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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.