From the moment two forbidden lovers – the prospective wife of an abusive minister and a reported troublemaker she ironically met at church – flee their repressive Puritan colony for the remote woods of western Massachusetts, the cabin they build in a mountain clearing becomes the setting for an astonishing collection of events across the centuries. In twelve chapters that press forward in time and evoke the different seasons, Mason reveals the transformative magic inherent in an ordinary place. Humanity and nature intermix, spurring small and large changes, and the layers of the past remain with us, albeit occasionally taking different, surprising forms.

While the different time periods aren’t formally signposted, each can be determined through the reading, and the chapters show impressive virtuosity in terms of period-suitable language, format, and characterization. In the anonymous “Nightmaids Letter,” a young wife who survives an Indian attack describes a scene of attempted vengeance and the shocking aftermath. An English veteran of the French and Indian War dedicates his life to his apple orchard; his twin daughters grow old while attempting to continue his legacy. Deep human emotion winds through the pages: loneliness, jealousy, passion, family ties, concealed and thwarted desire, along with beautiful reflections on the natural world, from the echo of songbirds to death and decay. A painter’s ongoing letters to his writer friend are among the most poignant sections.

Over the novel’s course, it feels especially rewarding (with some great “aha” moments for the reader) to see earlier episodes reappear as historical artifacts or tales down the road. Just like in life, the process of historical discovery can be incredible or frustrating, since mysteries from the past sometimes stay that way. The last two chapters, full of revelation, put the entire story-landscape into greater and more wondrous perspective. This wisely compassionate and refreshingly different literary epic is an excellent read.

Many thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this. Wow. This was such an excellent work. Each story was compelling and as a whole, the theme-related idea really worked for me. A usual novel but very much worth the ride. The writing is fantastic. I WILL be reading more of Mr. Mason's earlier works. Highly recommended. The hype on this one is not unjustified. This book will stay with you.

North Woods is a fascinating story that takes place in Western New England. It is a series of stories that revolve around a house, first constructed by a couple who escape their colonial colony because of their love for each other. Each subsequent story is linked to others by the house and often by the characters involved. The descriptions of the topography, plants, trees, birds, animals and weather of this area are so rich and nuanced I could almost smell the fallen leaves and the apples. The writing is beautiful with a wonderful vocabulary, clever descriptions of characters and pulls the reader directly into the stories. I absolutely recommend this book without reservation.

I was granted a pre-release copy of Northwoods by Daniel Mason courtesy of Northgate to review. All thoughts and opinions written here are my own and I received no compensation of any kind for this review.
Northwoods by Daniel Mason is a gripping tail. Difficult to put down and perfect for the fall months. I found it both charming and spooky as it tells the winding tail of a little house in the northwoods. This book is set up like a group of short stories all and woven through as a common thread. Is this small orchard of trees and this small yellow house. This is the first book by Daniel Mason that I've ever read, but I found it perfect for Halloween season as it illustrates the commonly spoken question of I wonder what tail this house could tell if it could speak or these woods or any variation thereof. We finally get an answer here in this book to these quiet musings. I love how these tails are woven together like a tapestry and if you look closely you can see how they were all meant to shape each other. Loop around and come back upon each other like thread. Weaving a beautiful tail. You have to pay attention to it though to get to see the beauty of the whole pattern. Bravo! Bravo! I hope to stumble upon one of Daniel Mason's books again soon. I thoroughly enjoyed this spooky tale

Two hundred years in a home and the land surrounding it told through the people that inhabited, walked across, reaped, and died on it. Two hundred years of history told through a myriad of voices, style and form. Letters, poetry, ballads and prose, Daniel Mason has not only encapsulated one lands history, but in a grander scale the whole country and the vast circle of life.
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Moving through time like a series of stacking blocks, characters come and go and come back again, sometimes merely in passing in a future generation, sometimes in other unexpected clever ways. There are English soldiers, swindlers and sisters, lovers and longing and the bountiful land and all that it offers.
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Comparisons to David Mitchell and his woven story telling like in both #Ghostwritten and #CloudAtlas, feels very apt here.
It’s ambitious in scope but intimate in its telling. Some of Its many pleasures are simply in the gorgeous prose and the brief time we get to spend with these simple wonderfully wrought human beings.
A book to make you wonder who wandered the rooms you walk through now. Who held someone in your bedroom before you? Who cried on the porch you’re sitting on? Who watched the sun rise or set from your kitchen window over a cup of coffee or tea?
Thank you to @randomhouse for the #gifted book, this is also a top notch audio selection, and thanks to @prhaudio for the

I loved this book, a chronological story of the north woods and the people, plants and animals who inhabited it over centuries. There is beauty, humor, secret love, jealousy, a few murders and some insect erotica. Characters included an apple grower and his twin daughters, a slave hunter, a mountain lion, seeds, gay lovers, a true crime reporter, and a mother and her schizophrenic son. I’ve never read anything structured in this way. Things from the past never really left, but continued to be present in the future in a very palpable (and sometimes lethal) way. I also loved and recommend “The Piano Tuner” and “A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth” by the same author. They were not at all like this book, and I appreciate the scope of the author’s imagination.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

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.