Reviews with content warning for Murder - North Woods

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North Woods by Daniel Mason

5 reviews

serendipitysbooks's review against another edition

emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

North Woods feels like an American Classic. It’s epic in time spanning from the mid 1700s through to the present and then into the future, yet small in geographical scope centred on a single yellow house and the woods surrounding it in Massachusetts. It unfolds like a series of interconnected short stories, each focused on the current inhabitants of the house. Spotting the connections between the characters and the stories is all part of the enjoyment. Mason shows his writing chops by incorporating a wide variety of genres and styles in this novel. There’s poetry, letters, journals, magazine articles, hospital notes, and a speech; there’s nature writing (particularly strong), true crime and a ghost story. The novel features a cast of memorable, fascinating characters - jealous spinster sisters, a Black woman fleeing a slave catcher, a closeted gay painter, a lusty beetle - not to mention a whole host of themes, some explored in greater depth than others. There’s violence to both the environment and the people, people move on and the landscape changes, and yet humanity and the land continue to survive. There may have been a bit too much of the supernatural for my personal tastes but that didn’t stop me totally enjoying and being thoroughly impressed by this novel.

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mondovertigo's review

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adventurous funny reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

funktious's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

My fiftieth book of the year and my latest #portybypost subscription book.

Loved this. A bit like a commonplace book, assembled from various different sources (songs, pictures, case notes, magazine articles) then strung together by chapters focusing on different periods in American history, focused on a house in the New England woods. Love stories and tragedies, murder and sex, families both human and animal. Plenty of deaths but no one truly dies and they return to the story at unexpected moments and in strange ways. I loved how discarded objects and belongings kept showing up dozens of years later and how different generations were linked in completely unpredictable ways. And always the apples and the catamount and the trees. Really good autumn read.

I propose a new calendar: not one Autumn but twelve, a hundred. The autumn when the birches are yellow but still have their leaves; when the beeches are green but the birch leaves have fallen; when the oaks tint to the colour of ripe apricots and the beeches yellow; when the oaks turn a cigar brown and the beeches curl up into crispy copper rolls. And so on; I’ve missed a few. But to call it all just “autumn”!

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jesselynn's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful informative mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Rapturous, moving and eternal.

An incredible book. It is a true epic of life, death, nature, history, succession and reclamation. Told in many voices and styles, we follow hundreds of years of history revolving around a house deep in the woods of Massachusetts. This book haunts its reader with the voices of the past, rallies the timeless human and non-human experiences that are held in a perpetual clandestine shroud between walls, branches and soil. It is sweeping and vibrant and rich in longing and grief and nature. A truly fascinating literary joy and stellar achievement by Daniel Mason.

Thank you to John Murray Press/Hachette for the advanced reader copy.

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rachel_from_avid_bookshop's review

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? N/A

5.0

Daniel Mason's North Woods is a masterful literary art form exploring the four-hundred-year history of the woods surrounding a particular house in western Massachusetts. Mason uses songs, journals, letters, medical notes, and other techniques to share the lives of those who live, love, suffer, create, and die there. The manner in which this book reveals the life cycles of flora and fauna is lyrical, respectful, and full of wonder and awe. Throughout North Woods humanity shapes and changes the environment, but the natural world very much reveals itself to be omnipotent.

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