(Audio) Book Review: North Woods by Daniel Mason

Having read Daniel Mason’s short story collection some years ago (review here), I wasn’t sure whether or not I wanted to read a full novel from him. I enjoyed the stories but I actually ended that review saying I wasn’t sure whether or not his style and voice would be sustainable over the length of a novel. However, there is at least one story in that collection that I’ve thought of from time to time since reading it so when I saw this was available in audio format, I decided to give it a try.

Funnily enough, this novel actually switches styles and voices throughout and so, I think, works very well for Mason as a writer and I applaud him for leaning into his strength. Rather than following a certain set of characters, North Woods focuses on place. A few hundred acres in the woods of Massachusetts and all the people and creatures that pass through and influence and are influenced by this land over a few hundred years. (Having recently read A Wrinkle in Time, it reminded me a bit of L’Engle’s A Swiftly Tilting Planet where characters move through time but not place.)

We begin with a young couple, runaways from a Puritan colony, who come across the region looking for a place of safety. From there, Mason moves the story forward through time, allowing the reader to make the connections between characters. Their stories are told in letters, in songs, in radio monologues, and narrative. Mason treats his reader as intelligent and doesn’t belabour the points to draw out the connections but lets you feel clever as you notice things that the characters themselves don’t or can’t know.

We have a retired army officer who becomes obsessed with apples, his twin daughters. A blustery hunter and his wife who claims to be haunted by amorous spirits. A troubled young man and the video recordings he makes in the forest. A true crime enthusiast and a grisly discovery. Interwoven through these human characters are the stories of the forest itself. The characters are brought together by the land and, for the most part, a house that has been built on this land. But we also get a focus on the animals who have always lived there, like the birds and the cougars (called catamounts here, a term I’m not familiar with but I assume is regional.) And there are the invasive species who alter the landscape as the humans do. Sometimes these sections get weird, like a longer than you might expect scene of copulating beetles. (Listening to this on audio while walking to work, I found myself triple-checking that my earbuds were firmly in.)

All together, it makes for a weird but charming book. It’s not one I would recommend willy-nilly because I think it requires a reader willing to wait for pay-off and put up with a fair amount of unusual formatting and storytelling. One who can suspend disbelief as to the reality of ghosts and the likelihood of certain connections. But if this sounds at all appealing to you, I do think it’s worthwhile.

I listened to this on audio with a narrator and then a complete cast taking on each section. This worked well as it made it easy to differentiate the sections and the characters, as well as keeping it within a narrative structure so that it felt like a connected tale.