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.

By now the word is out about this genre-bending novel. North Woods, by Daniel Mason, is nothing short of brilliant. My thanks go to NetGalley and Random House for the invitation to read and review; this book is available to the public now.

This book is all about the setting; there are some terrific characters, but don’t get too attached to any of them, because for the most part, they come and then leave. Rather, our story is about a cabin in the woods of upstate New York, and the acreage surrounding it, and how its use changes over the years.

We commence before the American Revolution, and so in the beginning, the narrative has the style of a very old diary, with antiquated spelling and language. This section is the reason I am so dreadfully late reading and reviewing this book. Honestly, the first fifteen percent or so is as dull as watching paint dry. I would begin reading it, but then my eyes would glaze over and I knew I had some other things to read by authors I knew and loved, and so I would switch books. But my Goodreads friends were raving about this book in unusually large numbers. Nobody didn’t like it. And so I summoned my self-discipline and went to it in a determined fashion, fortified by the audio version, which I received from Seattle Bibliocommons. This was very helpful. And once I got past that dry beginning, I began to understand why other readers were raving about it.

The first characters that are noteworthy are twin daughters named Alice and Mary, who are left to run the apple orchards on their own when their father goes off to war. He is a Loyalist, determined to save New England for his king. He doesn’t survive the war, which is just as well, because the locals hate him; he chose the wrong side to fight for. Neither daughter marries, and the property eventually goes to someone else.

The chain of owners is varied and, in many regards, absolutely hilarious. We see one new owner after another explore the house and the grounds, and of course, none of them has a full picture of the previous owner. I love the fact that I know more about this place than its most recent purchaser, and the assumptions that they make range from the merely incorrect to the disastrous. I cannot say too much more, although I particularly enjoy the character of George, whose phlegmatic, unattractive qualities are rendered uproarious in the audio version, and also the medium, a complete charlatan who’s horrified when she inadvertently awakens some actual supernatural beings. I would love to say more, but that would ruin it for you, and that would be a crime because surprise is an important part of the book’s success.

There is a formidable cast of actors that take on the reading for the audio book, and for those readers that are on the fence between audio and print, I recommend the audio version; better still, use both together.
After reading this one clever, memorable book, I will be watching to see what Daniel Mason writes next, because whatever it is, you know it will be good.

Highly recommended to those that enjoy historical fiction, literary fiction, humor, and horror.

North Woods is everything like the chestnut and apple trees that Daniel Mason writes about. Exquisite, unique, rare. The story centers on a piece of forested land and covers a variety of characters within a large time span, from the time the area is settled by colonists and into near future. The forest and trees change as the times change, evolving as each human caretaker has different values and visions. The author uses different techniques and structures to tell the stories of individual landowners. This is an engaging, interesting, and beautiful book.

This is the story of a home. It is the story of a forest that witnesses the building of that home, its decay and its revitalization. It is the story of the very human experiences that take place in a home. It is, quite simply, the kind of story that is unfolding around all of us all the time - and yet Daniel Mason makes it seem so rare and beautiful in this brilliant, brilliant book.

Spanning generations, NORTH WOODS is the chronicle of the many lives that are lived in a plot of land in Western Massachusetts. More of a collection of short stories than a novel, the book doesn’t quite fit into any category. It is historical, and it is clever, and it is very clearly well researched. But perhaps most significantly, it is tender. It feels intimate. To say I felt enchanted by this book would not quite do it justice. I think, in fact, that I feel haunted by it - and I’m entirely okay with that.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a review copy. All opinions here are my own.

5 stars. Amazing book and, though I read it at the end of the year, immediately made my top 10 list. The writing was incredible and the story flew along. Would that all Pulitzer-nominated books were this fun to read.

What a strange book - a great premise, but not sure I enjoyed the execution. You follow a cabin in the remote woods of Massachusetts, from the time before the Revolutionary War to sometime close to the present. Some of the characters are quite bizarre - the ones that stuck with me are the sisters Mary and Alice. I did not feel I got all the answers I wanted, and some of the stories I just had to plough through. I do not know why this book is landing on so many "best of 2023" lists - it is not on mine.

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND THE WASHINGTON POST’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, The Boston Globe, NPR, Chicago Public Library, The Star Tribune, The Economist, The Christian Science Monitor, Real Simple, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Bookreporter

It is clear from the above that North Woods is a special book. Anyone who enjoys an immersive read will want to give this title a look. It tells the story of a place over the course of many years and many lives and through many narrative threads. As an added perspective, there is much on nature in these pages. 

The story begins with the Puritans; readers get to know these first (and all of the other characters) well. All have stories to tell and their lives cover many years of American history.

I highly recommend this complex and rewarding book. Get to know the yellow house. Take the time to enjoy time spent there.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for this title. All opinions are my own.

Easily one of the best books of 2023. The language is excellently crafted to entice the reader and ensnare them in the tale to the very last page.

When I started this I thought it was rather slow and boring. I was ready to give up and then I saw that it was listed on the best of 2023. I ended up sticking with it since the short story aspect makes it an easy read. While this didn't make my best of 2023 list, I think it is worth the read. Each story gets more wild as you go and I ended up liking it more than I expected to. It may not be the best of 2023 for me but it definitely wins the quirkiest of 2023.

This is the story of a place. The different people that end up living there tell the story in short stories that are so vividly different that it's easy to see how the people have changed but the place remains remarkably consistent. The language is vivid and specific to each time period. Super interesting read.

A novel spanning centuries, centered around an old home, with beautiful writing, and characters that are well done.. SIGN ME UP! I loved this novel. It has everything I love. I felt connected to the house. It was just as much a character in the novel as the living, breathing ones. This is a slower read, but there is much to appreciate in that.

Having read many reviews for this book, I was excited to delve into North Woods. I am familiar with the area of New England where it is set and I love history. This was advertised to be about a series of people living in a remote cabin over time beginning with the era of the Puritans. Unfortunately I found the transitions from one occupant to the next confusing. I sometimes had trouble making the connections between the characters or even understanding who the characters were. For these reasons it was difficult for me to become engaged with the story though the writing about the natural aspects of the setting was beautiful. Perhaps this was just the wrong book for me at this time. I will try it again at a later date. I thank the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

North Woods tells the story of a plot of land over centuries and its inhabitants. Ranging from spinster twin sisters, to beetles, to a painter, to many more.

You can argue that this book is just a collection of short nature stories that are all connected by this plot of land / cabin in the middle of the woods - you wouldn’t be wrong. Some stories were more catching to me than others, but they all still held my attention.

I ended up listening to this as an audiobook and first off - I had to move the speed up to 1.75 because of how slow the reading was. The prose were absolutely great and beautiful in the story, just so many words. This really makes it seem that I don’t like it, but I totally did, I just needed it sped read.

This novel has stories told through letters, journal entries, historical records, a true crime magazine, and poetry that showcase human’s beautiful connection with nature that involve forbidden love, enslavement, insecurity, mental health, and climate change.

Overall, this is a beautifully written novel filled with stories that will possibly make you think about your childhood home, or of the older buildings and houses around you, and all that they have witnessed. Those who love literary fiction with historical fiction will fall in love with this.

*Thank you Random House and NetGalley for an advance digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

A beautiful book, told in a collage of styles and across a sprawling timeline, that creates a panoramic portrait of a landscape and the people (and plants and animals) who live on it. Daniel Mason is a skillful writer and researcher—the historical voices never sound stilted or overwrought (unlike THE VASTER WILDS, which is similar in aim and genre and much worse in execution.)

I enjoyed the formal experimentation, especially in contrast to his former book, THE WINTER SOLDIER, which was much more straightforwardly historical fiction. As an eBook, I found that I stalled out a little between the sections and forgot where I was, but I assume a real paper book would solve most of my complaints pacing-wise.

The form very much reminded me of Jenny Erpenbeck's VISITATION, that focuses on different generations living in a house throughout 19th and 20th century German history, and also George Saunder's LINCOLN IN THE BARDO.

Another winner from Mason. Years ago we discussed his first novel The Piano Tuner in book group and I’ve looked forward to his novels ever since. North Woods is set in the north woods of Massachusetts and follows the residents of a house from Puritan times past today and into the future. Themes of history, environment, nature, hope weave through Mason’s wonderful storytelling. The language is beautiful and the text using a number of literary forms - prose, poetry, songs, letters, lectures and visual arts.