Laura

Wide open spaces...a strong sense of place all through this long poem. You are flying over the grasses and fields of the prairies as you read, occasionally brought down into towns and homes and people's lives. A person who has left, disconnected from their hometown, an entire population disconnected from their ideals and from the land, alienated. Sometimes the writing veers a bit too far from the main ideas and becomes a little hard to follow, but it always loops back and in a way the veering adds to the rhythm of the poem, making it feel expansive/lost in a big world.

Beautiful and while the analyses and info are brief they are genuinely insightful, written in a more poetic way than many tarot books. I also loved the quotes.
And of course the images are incredible and inspiring...I only wish it went into as much detail about the minor arcana as it does the major. It would have to be two volumes probably but I think it would be worth it.

Seemed like the author was trying really hard to be edgy...unsuccessfully. Some of the stories were almost good, but overall I found them kind of underdeveloped. At least it was a quick read!

I loved this book!

Each story and essay gradually builds on those before it, circling around themes of shyness, introversion, creativity, and family love. The descriptions, such as the experience of being a child exploring the countryside with no sense of time, and the feeling of not fitting into a group as a teenager, are so relatable. Many of the chapters cut back and forth between present day and memories in a way that feels intuitive and is enjoyable to read. I really liked the way these essays all came together; this book really makes the concept of a memoir in essays work well.

Highly recommend!

A weird book. I agree with the person who said it reads like a rough draft. It's like one long fever dream sequence. I would love to see this animated though, the imagery was crazy.

3.5⭐️ this was very fun but definitely did not NEED to be 530 pages. But I enjoyed it!

I have a million thoughts about this book, and I recommend it highly to anyone thinking about the complexities of motherhood, or just the challenges of being a human person who can't help but project your thoughts, feelings, and experiences onto those around you. This is an uncomfortable and fascinating book, with characters who are simultaneously intensely dislikable and (sometimes) terrifyingly relateable.

The narrator, Eva, is obviously presenting us with an unreliable version of events, but as we have no other version to go on we are forced to read between the lines, judging her understandings of what happened through the lens of the behaviours she presents to us and the way she speaks. This traps you in a spiral of questioning and doubt.

The rest of my review contains spoilers/ Eva is both defensive and self-recriminating, stewing in guilt but also painting a picture of a miserable life in which her husband was (intentionally or unintentionally) gaslighting her, and in which she and her son hated each other. The book's main question is whether her son is deeply evil, or whether her intense mistrust of him from infancy pushed his character in a certain direction. It is a unique take on the nature vs. nurture question, and inevitably the answer is somewhere in between. At the same time, Kevin so often seems like a reflection of the worst parts of Eva's personality, or, she acts like him. She often acts just like him. Did he learn these behaviors from her? Did she learn them from him? If she approached her son with a different attitude could they have bonded over their acidic judgment of the world, their tendency towards selfishness, their feelings of detachment? And yet, at the same time as you ask yourself those questions, you remember what he did and his lack of remorse and the gulf opens up between them again. The end of the book delivers two more devastating blows: the first which I won't even write here in case anyone did not heed my spoiler warning (yes, you can sort of guess it while reading, but I did not want to try to guess, so I did not). That first revelation makes Eva's alone-ness even more acute, for even the righteous indignation we feel on her behalf through much of the book can have no answer. The second twist is Kevin's turn towards softness and remorse. This moment, their hug at the end of the book, leaves your head spinning. How can we reconfigure our understanding of Kevin to include the capacity for remorse, for goodness, for uncertainty?

A content warning: there are a few moments where Eva, the protagonist/narrator, expresses some borderline racist/stereotypical views of other groups...these are presented clearly as the narrator's views not the author's, and serve to characterize Eva further as self-centered and flawed in a particular way. I know that Lionel Shriver has also been considered a controversial figure. These views are not throughout the book but do come up maybe two or three times.

And a final warning: if you, like me, are a teacher, probably don't read this book in the lunchroom at school because someone will inevitably ask you what you are reading and then you will have to have a fairly uncomfortable conversation...

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 think this book has a lot to offer, although the first half felt really long. I think this book is useful for insights in how to approach one's everyday life and everyday life kinds of stresses/pressures. Where it feels less applicable is thinking about major issues that occur less often but cause great stress. But I could be wrong. The main reason I gave it 3 stars is that the first half felt like it took ages to get through, and felt somewhat repetitive. The second half reads very quickly.

I did take a lot of good little notes, here are some of them. Some of these are direct quotes but most are paraphrases. Many of these seem obvious but the way they were explained in the book adds to them:

- You can't numb bad feelings without also numbing good ones

- The opposite of joy is not sadness but fear

- We are so afraid of the dark that we don't let ourselves enjoy the light

- Trust, gratitude, inspiration, faith (all together allow for joyful moments)

- Our need for certainty gets in the way of intuition

- Anxiety is contagious but so is calm

- Being busy to avoid stress/anxiety = a negative feedback loop. Calm/stillness = opportunity for clarity about the causes of stress/anxiety.

I wish this was scarier, and I think it could have been better if it was a bit longer.
But it was one of the most page-turning things I've read in a while and I did not want to put it down.

3.5⭐️

Glad I finally read this. The writing is beautiful and I love how unlikeable a lot of the characters, including Edna, were to me. She is so her own person and the author is not trying to make her a stand-in for a generic feminist/self righteous woman. She approaches every situation in this book in ways that I found deeply unrelateable, which again made me feel that she was a truly distinct and individual character.

That being said, the ending, while somewhat in-character and definitely poetic, did dampen the overall message/themes of the book. Yet another literary woman who tries to emancipate herself from the patriarchy but cannot escape authorial punishment. Even female authors took this route. Also while there was one line where Edna acknowledges that even Robert wouldn't make her happy long term, it does sort of seem like the main reason she decides to free herself from patriarchal/marital control is because she gets a crush on a different man. Which kind of negates some of the independence of it all.

Which brings me to some of my issues with this book. 1. Gender roles. The way the characters are described is so deeply entrenched in gender roles and stereotypes (even for the time, there are other books from the time and even from many years earlier that do this much less) - women are flaky, dreamy, sensual, poetic, irrational, passionate etc. Men are businesslike, rational, calm, and sometimes playboys. That's it. 2. Race and class. Given the subject matter the complete lack of awareness of the experience of women with less privilege/freedom is noticeable. Even if Edna were to occasionally acknowledge her servants as people that would help. Not to mention a few scenes where characters heavily use racist stereotypes and descriptions when talking about different groups of people. It is obviously a product of its time but still worth noting when read from a modern lens.

Listened to the audiobook read by the author, which adds a lot to this book I think. Her tone and rhythm as she really performs the pieces of writing, adds layers of meaning. I think I would have still loved some of the pieces if I had been reading in print, but maybe not as many of them would have been impactful. I loved the presence of magic and myth reference in metaphors and vocabulary throughout this book.

Disturbing. Really accurately captures the extremely unhinged energy of tumblr dot com in the 2010s. If you were ever a teen on tumblr, and/or if you have ever had even a passing interest in true crime, highly recommend this book.

Not perfect and I wish the critique of true crime was more interesting/robust, and the final chapter felt kind of unnecessary or over done (you already know not to trust the embedded story's narrator without it being hammered in in the final chapter...or the reminder could have been done in a more clever way) but overall I enjoyed it. The embedded narration was constantly a reminder to question, and worked well. Also having a female author writing a male narrator who is in turn writing from the pov of teenage girls was really interesting. The critique of how men write about/talk about teenage girls was never stated but thoroughly embedded in the writing.

If Holden Caulfield was an art thief...

I loved this book. I read it in an evening and I can tell
I will continue thinking about it. The lush descriptions of nature and the simultaneous urge and fear of becoming feral and merging with the woods...wow. I feel that.

In many ways this reminded me of one of my favourite books, Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett. The descriptions of nature reminded me of the remoteness of the life described in that book, and the specificity with which the protagonists notice specific details about their surroundings. It also somewhat reminded me of No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood, which I also loved, as both that book and this one deal with people who are intensely aware of the news and too much online and suffering as a result. And experiencing the world
through a lens that those around them do not entirely understand. All three of these books have strands of feeling uncomfortable in the world, pulling away, but simultaneously being deeply invested in everything going on in the world (though not in a healthy way). Like those books, this also gave me the feeling of reading thoughts I have had but never been able to articulate.

Reading this book felt like being sucked in to something mysterious, dark, and beautiful.

For the first half of this book I was really enjoying it...but after the characters leave school the plot kind of loses momentum and changes direction in a way that feels rushed and aimless and left me not really caring what happened. I still enjoyed it overall, and there were a lot of ideas that were fun and interesting to explore re: “gifted” kids who grow up reading fantasy books and imagining being the hero...and then it happens and we see how that might actually go.

I also appreciated the more “realistic” magic school context - where the classes are difficult and it's at the university level (although it did feel like the author kept forgetting that, describing things that sounded like high school, and then having a character go “sometimes it felt like we were still in high school” to explain it). And the idea that people with magical powers might go on to live lives of ennui because they don't have to work for anything is an interesting proposal, if bleak.

I see people raising the criticism that the characters don't really learn any lessons - and I think the issue is more so that they just don't develop all that much. I don't need them to learn powerful lessons and become unrealistically heroic people but to at least...idk, change a bit. To make the plot seem like it meant something. Because otherwise the plot felt very low stakes (even the big bad monster at the end didn't really seem to pose a threat to this world? He mostly posed a threat to a fantasy realm that the author did not spend enough time on developing for me to really care about that much).

I've seen this described as “Holden Caulfield goes to Hogwarts” and that is quite accurate. Although I think if it actually had been that I might have liked it slightly better.

Ultimately there was a lot I liked about this and I'm glad I read it, but I wish I had liked it more.

So creepy.

4.5 ⭐️

One of my favourite things about these books is the way the system of magic in them is described/works. It's a kind of gross, visceral, exaggerated version of sympathetic magic. It's indulgent and disgusting at the same time and makes sense or follows a kind of internal logic that is really satisfying (in a way that saying magic spells and waving a wand is not - this has more of an anchor in the real world I guess).

I think I liked this more than Ninth House. I found the characters more vivid and deeper. While these books are super plot-driven, page-turner adventures, getting to know more of the characters in depth really added to this one. Sometimes the writing is repetitive (like using the same turn of phrase a few times) and sometimes the tone shifts in a weird way (moments of humour or levity that - while welcome and often genuinely funny - can sometimes feel a little awkwardly placed) but none of these issues actually took me out of the story.

I listened to the first half as an audiobook and read the second half.

3.5 stars

Loved the art.

This book felt like a mumblecore movie with no plot...which could be fine but drifting between characters, trying to deal with a million different issues, AND lacking plot is a combination that doesn't entirely work. The overall reading experience was quite enjoyable and it gave me a lot to think about, but I think this might have worked better as a series of books or a series of short graphic novellas, each with an actual plot line, and each able to fully delve into characters and issues.

I thought for the most part the depictions of different characters was quite nuanced...with a few exceptions. The setting and issues dealt with are really interesting and the story did a good job of interweaving all these issues...but I felt that for the relatively short length of the book it was trying to do too much. SO many topics get touched on or brushed over. In some ways this is accurate to real life, as in a given day you might casually mention or think about any number of topics...but the author was clearly trying to make a point or reveal something about each of these and it felt like there wasn't enough time for any of them or most of them to really be dealt with in a meaningful way. Mennonite history, land rights/indigenous land claims, pipelines, pacifism, LGBT acceptance in the church, LGBT acceptance in a small town, parent/child relationships, intergenerational relationships, disability, farming issues, appreciation of nature/dominion of nature, missionaries/white saviours/voluntourism, mega churches vs. small churches vs. new conservative churches, disputes over the meaning of Remembrance Day etc....So many threads got dropped, characters that could have been interesting fade into the background.

This was a very entertaining/interesting book...but...

1) I think it should have been about Alden Barrett from the beginning. His was the most interesting story and made up the bulk of the book. I know Alice is more famous but it was weird that Alden Barrett is not even mentioned until Part 2. The section that was just a narrative of his life was the most compelling and read like a sort of real life, third person and slightly more clinical version of catcher in the rye. Then the following stuff about how his family suffered and his story was exploited was really sad. The author still could have included the satanic panic and Beatrice Sparks stuff, but framing it explicitly around that story would have made sense since it was by far the most interesting part...

2) A lot of the negative reviews on Goodreads focus on the fact that he didn't cite any sources (he explains in a general sense how he got the info). Unlike some of the reviewers, I don't think he did this maliciously or made anything up necessarily...but this feels like a very lazy/stupid move in light of what this book is largely about (debunking fraudulent works of “non-fiction”). Like, sir, why not just list your sources and clearly delineate yourself from the person you just wrote an entire book criticizing?

!!!
5 stars
Not really a Review Just Notes:

- folklore-retelling, present & past mixing, Jewish magical realism - I dont think I have ever read a fantasy/magical realism novel with Jewish main characters so that was a new and good experience - or maybe I have but it didn't impact me in this particular way, I don't know. Definitely something for me to seek out more of...among other things this made me want to learn more about my family history...pre arrival in canada...
- the complexity of the way history is lived in the present was so well done here. Both the ways a family's history is passed down in the physical body and the family psychology, but also the way that those legacies (in this case represented in part by magical powers) are not portrayed as wholly good or bad but instead very complex.
- the idea of houses coming alive is extremely cool.
- the telling and retelling of myth/story/history by the house itself was a really beautiful aspect of this book and also made any plot holes or story discrepancies matter less because the idea of storytelling itself was being discussed and “all stories are true”
- the historical parts of this book were powerfully told and the weaving of past and present worked really well. The climactic scene was chaotic but still managed to have really beautiful imagery, and the naming of the villagers and reviving their stories was meaningful
- p. 328
- the descriptions in general are very vivid.

Critiques:

- there were plot holes but none took away from the overall impact of this book for me enough to knock it down from 5 stars. The vibes made sense even when the plot occasionally did not.
- I guess the biggest world-building question was just why aren't there more of the longshadow man/memories haunting the present in physical form.
- I didn't like the one fourth wall break towards the end, referencing “your world” where all the magic stuff is not present...that felt like a moment of not trusting the reader to understand that this is our world despite the small differences.
- the presence of the 3 bus characters was not well explained. Their presence made the book feel more like an adventure story, and i didn't dislike them, but they did feel a bit random. Similarly i wish the plot line with Winnie had been more fleshed out (lol) - i saw a few negative reviews saying this book was too long and i honestly think the opposite, it could have been a few chapters longer and given a bit more backstory on the three bus characters and a bit more development of Winnie (the whole geological thing was really cool and maybe could have been more deeply tied into the idea of stories/remembering etc if her character had been developed a bit more).
- kinda reads like YA in parts but I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing...

Beautiful and thoughtful little book. Do read the text notes and photo descriptions at the back: they add a lot of context and concrete examples to the ideas discussed in the text.

Absolutely devastating book. The first chapter or two are slow but so worth getting through. This is like a Shakespearean tragedy. I read some of it as a print book but listened to the majority in the audiobook which is read and performed exceptionally well by Christopher Lee.

This book was way more than I expected it to be (and I expected it to be very good). Major recommend.

God these characters could be so frustrating at times - but also so sympathetic.
The characterization of all three main characters (and literally every other character in the book) is so nuanced and complex. Everyone is flawed in very realistic and difficult ways. The relationships are developed really well.
I also love that as well as being a novel about relationships it is also a novel about the creative process/the experience of collaborating/responding to feedback, dealing with failure, and just about work in general...
There are some incredibly incredibly beautiful passages, some really funny parts, some painfully relatable, some refreshingly relatable...and some just straight up frustrating. But I cared the whole time. Highly recommend.
Also kind of made me wish I was born about 15 years or so earlier haha.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️