LoveReading Says
Seductively different and oh so provocative, I have completely and irrevocably fallen in love with this novel. Travel in time from the first settlers on a plot of land in New England to those who come after, this is as much about nature, the landscape, and the dwelling, as it is the people. Author Daniel Mason has a featherlight touch that he is able to wield with a hammer blow. The sense of place is immense. The characters live in a vivid spark of vibrant life. Moments in time are fixed, and yet drift into what is to come, all are connected. I ached as I left each stage before becoming utterly consumed by the next. This feels like an epic piece, a study of humanity, an ode to nature, and yet it is as intimate and penetrating as can be. I will be recommending this beauty far and wide, it of course joins our LoveReading Star Books, and sits as a Liz Pick of the Month. Inspiring and unique, North Woods is an unforgettable novel that truly deserves to fly.
Liz Robinson
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North Woods Synopsis
FOUR CENTURIES. A SINGLE HOUSE DEEP IN THE WOODS OF NEW ENGLAND.
A young Puritan couple on the run. An English soldier with a fantastic vision. Inseparable twin sisters. A lovelorn painter and a lusty beetle. A desperate mother and her haunted son. A ruthless con man and a stalking panther. Buried secrets. Madness, dreams and hope.
All are connected. The dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.
Exhilarating, daring and playful, NORTH WOODS will change the way you see the world.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781399809306 |
| Publication date: |
29th August 2024 |
| Author: |
Daniel Mason |
| Publisher: |
John Murray Publishers Ltd an imprint of John Murray Press |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
384 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Modern and Contemporary Fiction
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| Other Genres: |
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| Recommendations: |
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Daniel Mason Press Reviews
Mason follows the inhabitants of a secluded western Massachusetts home and their tragedies across centuries in this spectacular ghost story . . . [He] interleaves his crystalline prose with enchanting and authentic-seeming historical documents . . . Each arc is beautifully, heartbreakingly conveyed, stitching together subtle connections across time. This astonishes - Pulbishers Weeky, starred review
Virtuosic, astonishing, gorgeously vivid -- Alison O'Keeffe - Bookseller
The story of a house, the humans who inhabit it, the ghosts who haunt it, and the New England forest encompassing them all . . . Readers will find themselves in an entrancing fictional realm where the human, natural, and supernatural mingle, all captured in the author's effortlessly virtuosic prose . . . Throughout, this loose and limber novel explores themes of illicit desire, madness, the occult, the palimpsest of human history, and the inexorable workings of the natural world (a passage recounting the fateful mating of an elm bark beetle is unforgettable), all handled with a touch that is light and sure. Like the house at its center, a book that is multitudinous and magical. - Kirkus
A magisterial mosaic . . . truly triumphant - Booklist
North Woods is a monumental achievement of polyphony and humanity. Relating the narrative of an entire country via a single plot of land, it sweeps the reader through hundreds of years and an array of protagonists with a deft, heartbreaking, idiosyncratic zeal. I loved it. - Maggie O'Farrell
North Woods is a sui generis work of pure brilliance, an epic written with a miniaturist's precision. Daniel Mason has unearthed, in the centuries-spanning history of a single New England home, a universal story of loss and reclamation. This is the best book I've read in ages - Anthony Marra, New York Times bestselling author of MERCURY PICTURES PRESENTS
Ambitious, alive, and lush with generosity, North Woods is an immersive sprint through time. It offers an inventive portrait of the individual and the collective, a vivid history of a cabin and a country, inhabiting each of its characters with a compassion that took my breath away. I emerged from this book as though from an enchanted forest, covered in leaves and changed by what I had seen there. Electrifying - Tess Gunty, author of THE RABBIT HUTCH
About Daniel Mason
Daniel Mason received his bachelor's degree in biology at Harvard in 1998 and spent a year studying malaria on the Thailand-Myanmar border, where much of his debut, The Piano Tuner, was written. He recently graduated from the University of California, San Francisco, where he was studying medicine.
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