North Woods by Daniel Mason
North Woods by Daniel Mason is the story of a plot of land in rural Massachusetts, told via the lives of those who lived there - a young couple who escape from a Puritan colony, an English soldier who develops a love for orchards, spinster twins, a painter, a crime reporter, beetles and even a panther.
Interconnected
There are twelve interconnected stories told via love letters, nature journals, historical reports and even ballads in the language of the period. With such a variety of narrators and styles, you’d think it might feel a bit disjointed, like short stories - but it worked quite well.
Some of the characters I wanted to spend more time with, such as the twin spinsters - I enjoyed their story best. I saw a lot of gushing reviews for this book over on the ‘gram, but while I admired it, I didn’t completely fall for it.
Nature
The passages describing nature were my favourite - it’s very much a book about the ebb and flow, blights and plagues, nature losing to man’s encroachments, before reclaiming it back again. This regeneration over the centuries is very much the beating heart of the book, and for me where the vivid imagery was at its strongest.
There’s a lot in here - loneliness, mental health, forbidden love, joy and sorrow. It took me a while to read it - it’s not a book to be rushed. It’s not that the writing is dense, more so that I just wanted to enjoy the writing and the storytelling.
It’s technically superb, and I can see why the author has been so lauded, but for all my enjoyment of the sheer inventiveness and scope of the book, I didn’t feel emotionally engaged with a lot of it. But definitely worth a read.
372 pages, Hardcover
Published September 19, 2023 by Random House