A review by funktious
North Woods by Daniel Mason

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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