Daniel Mason

A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—a daring, moving tale of memory and fate from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier. When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become home to an extraordinary succession of inhabitants. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins survive war and famine, only to succumb to envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths a mass grave, but finds the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle: as each one confronts the mysteries of the north woods, they come to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive. Traversing cycles of history, nature, and even literature, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment and to one another, across time, language and space. Written along with the seasons and divided into the twelve months of the year, it is an unforgettable novel about secrets and fates that asks the timeless question: how do we live on, even after we’re gone?

A Novel

North Woods

Vera bee

she has found that the only way to understand the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change.

ella

Sometimes, overwhelmed, she retreats into the forests of the past. She has come to think of them as her private Archive, herself as Archivist, and she has found that the only way to understand the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change. During her life, she'd dreamed about these ancient forests, but what she finds is glorious beyond imagination. Skies blackened by bird flocks, valleys full of grazing moose and elk. The glens echo with the songs of long-lost warblers (and by now, she's learned them), children singing in Mohican, wolf howl. Rivers so thick with fish that she could walk on them. The ghosts of the damselflies, dryad's saddle, elm trees: a thousand angels on a blade of grass.

Let me put it another way: The dead do not go away. The world teems with their spirits: a thousand angels on a blade of grass.

Brandon Eckroth

History haunts him who does not honour it.

Amna A.

I went in with an expectation of it being a story of a cabin in the woods, each generation's story gradually unfolding. But there's so much more beautiful nature writing than I expected, and some Shirley Jackson type ghosts as well. And I think these two genres of nature writing and the supernatural worked really well together. The vivid descriptions of the textures, scents, and patterns found among the woodland fauna and flora emphasise the uniqueness of each season and how differently they all return in following years, decades, and centuries. Whereas the characters we see inhabiting those woods somewhat echo the past generations, reappearing in fammiliar phrases, lost correspondence letters, archaeological findings, ghost hauntings, séances, and the structure of the cabin/house itself when looking back at the architechural changes accumulated and layered over the years.

I also loved how the chapter format varied depending on the subject (letters, farming manual, poems, a physiatrist's personal journal, a flyer advertising a property listing, a true crime magazine), and included photos/illustrations contributing to the atmosphere. The different formats and perspectives also presented the events (especially those pertaining to the supernatural) as ambiguous and could be interpreted differently.

I feel like this quote captures the essence of the book:

 "Sometimes, overwhelmed, she retreats into the forests of the past. She has come to think of them as her private Archive, herself as Archivist, and she has found that the only way to understand the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change. During her life, she'd dreamed about these ancient forests, but what she finds is glorious beyond imagination. Skies blackened by bird flocks, valleys full of grazing moose and elk. The glens echo with the songs of long-lost warblers, children singing in Mohican, wolf howl. Rivers so thick with fish that she could walk on them. The ghosts of the damselfies, dryad's saddle, elm trees: a thousand angels on a blade of grass."

Really unique look at a geography and how it's shaped by time. The writing was compassionate and real and brought me closer to the past. 

Abigail Swallow

I always try to begin the year with a book from the top-ten list of the year prior. Out of those masterpieces, North Woods heightened my intrigue the most. And it did not disappoint. The variety in prose and narrative kept me turning page after page. Stories told from countless perspectives (strangers, friends, observers) in countless mediums (letters between lovers, first-person accounts of murder, 1900s true crime publications). All which make you fall in love with an orchard in the north woods of Massachusetts that opens the door to a whole new understanding of this world and the world that comes after.

North Woods A Novel

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