North Woods

Just couldn't get into it, I don't get it and already lost interest, might do some research and come back to it later

Dull

Wow, what a brilliant read. It reminded me a lot of The Overstory with its trees and ecological themes, but spanning hundreds of years, a dozen central characters, twisting narrations and common stopping places. Immersive and enthralling.

I loved it, but I need to read it again when I can concentrate on it more fully. I’m sure I missed connections between characters.

I enjoyed this book overall, but since it is really a series of vignettes I didn’t feel like there was anything really compelling to drive me through reading. I overall really enjoyed most of the stories and the callbacks to earlier characters in later chapters. The final two chapters were the least compelling for me

The concept was interesting – I love thinking of the changes of people and experiences and time occurring over one piece of land. I enjoyed some of the stories, especially the first ones. I skimmed other sections, not as engaged in those stories. It seemed a bit like the concept was more important than having the reader feel a part of the story, hence my 3 stars.

This novel is a genre bender. Or maybe it would be better to say it has some of almost every genre in it. It has prose narrative from almost every perspective, in different styles, from a doctor's case notes to true crime tabloid, and plenty of third person omniscient that flows along so seamlessly that you might forget that you are reading as you are mesmerized by the stories of a house on a plot of land in the western Massachusetts woodlands and the succession of people (and animals and insects) who lived there over the years since colonization. There is poetry, song, photography, thwarted romance, and an unabashed ghost story. Some of this sits together a little awkwardly. When you start to get comfortable in one section of the book, look out, because you are about to be unseated and it may take you a while to settle in again. I found the end pulled everything together for me, though, so the disparate parts made a convincing, beautiful, slightly melancholy whole.

Wow. Just wow. I loved this book despite my not thinking I would. I became so caught up in the lives of the humans and the nature around them. The last 2 chapters blew me away with the beauty of the writing (although the whole book is beautifully written--I just happened to love those chapters the best). The last line is perfection.

4.5 ⭐️ This book was incredibly heartwarming and unique. It reminds me of a paper people chain where everyone is connected through the little yellow house in the North Woods.

would give this six stars if i could

One of those books that evokes an intellectual response of “whoa, the plot was wicked cool,” and an emotional response of “meh.”

Solid 3.5 - certain sections were more effective than others. The concept itself is very interesting - what happens in the same home years and year on, while certain ghostly residents never leave. Made me think of the graphic novel (but more on the graphics side than novel side) by Richard McGuire. Time to pull it off the shelf and enjoy it again.

It's Cloud Atlas meets The Overstory. A collection of connected short stories, spanning 3 centuries, centred around a yellow house deep in the woods of Massachusetts incorporating diary entries, letters, songs, poems, medical notes and more, written by young lovers escaping puritanical judgement, a Loyalist soldier struck with pomomania, a buxom fortune teller, a slave hunter, a schizophrenic, twin spinsters, a disgraced amateur historian, a closeted painter and plenty of ghosts beside. Throw in the smutty goings on of a horny scolytid beetle, the thwarted efforts of an industrious squirrel preparing for winter, a spore shaken from the coat of a dog, and various mountain lions. Not to mention various folks axed, eviscerated, and blown away. Each chapter is written in accordance to the time and narrator, from the prim prose of the late 18th century, the florid letters from a 19th century painter, to the lurid exclamations of a 70's true crime writer.

[Deep breath] It's a lot, and yet Mason somehow manages to pull it off and land this thing. It is pure storytelling magic where all that is asked of you is to revel in the magic of the words on the page. Not a bad side hustle when Mason isn't busy teaching psychiatry at Stanford. #showoff

My first five star read in a long, long time. I felt tangled in this book, like I was part of the forest.

This was a fun and thought-provoking read. As a historian, I especially appreciate the way the stories ask you to consider history all around us and the difficulty of reclaiming it. I was not expecting the the spectral characters, but I liked them. Since I listened to this book, and there were so many interconnected story lines, I am tempted to get the hard copy (or e-book) to read again. I'm looking forward to a discussion with my book club.

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!

Be warned, this one is a slow burn. At 20% or so I was considering DNFing, but I perservered and I'm very glad I did so. It comes together and builds beautifully, and the last quarter or so is superb. Some wonderful lyrical nature writing, and boundless compassion and empathy for a wide range of lives.