Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Kindle
$13.99

Available instantly

Audiobook
$0.00
with membership trial

Hardcover
$21.88

Paperback
$23.11

$21.88 with 22 percent savings

List Price: $28.00

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Friday, May 24 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Or fastest delivery Thursday, May 23. Order within 14 hrs 49 mins

Select delivery location

In Stock

$$21.88 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Ships from

Amazon.com

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Returns

30-day easy returns

Returns

30-day easy returns

This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.

Read full return policy

Payment

Secure transaction

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Details

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

$20.55

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

Book in Very Good Condition. Book in Very Good Condition. See less

FREE delivery June 2 - 12 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Or fastest delivery June 1 - 10

Select delivery location

$$21.88 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Enhancements you chose aren't available for this seller. Details

${cardName} not available for the seller you chose

${cardName} unavailable for quantities greater than ${maxQuantity}.

Sold by Ehood Books and Fulfilled by Amazon.

Other sellers on Amazon

New & Used (79) from $20.55 FREE Shipping on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon.

Follow the author

Daniel Mason

+ Follow

More books from this author

North Woods by Daniel MasonPenguin Random House LLC

Image Unavailable

Image not available for
Color:

To view this video download Flash Player

2 VIDEOS

North Woods: A Novel Hardcover – September 19, 2023

by Daniel Mason (Author)

4.2 7,417 ratings

Editors' pick Best Books of the Year 2023

See all formats and editions

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$21.88","priceAmount":21.88,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"21","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"88","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"s08r3k8XLiS3AVTO1Xx0Kz2qDEFjsWIRu%2FVhRIcrFCS805Y%2FJHcwA2Mwa59BJnwBZhrUuD5thn75WEoU%2FkJgeMphLUvTxLCadZh4zMUajrScR9pCGQkSCLDFoX1Vd%2BGRliAM5yUczl0LsgUv2pyuWA%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$20.55","priceAmount":20.55,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"20","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"55","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"s08r3k8XLiS3AVTO1Xx0Kz2qDEFjsWIR1WPl6mU7kfMKlgUMCkAxx7%2B6opeR9Qfz1H9OFzbM3efYDy%2FWzM5LOzX0nl6g4rFCjhg0%2FZ%2F5WPDuB2BbIupUP2DFKT9L2EUK2bJWA75gxtGV4vrGqMcHyRGAT46aFjbXvooJiZD3ELZEpHhDCFzlqmfvSFx47spP","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR

A WASHINGTON POST TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD

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 time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic” (The Washington Post) from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier.

“With the expansiveness and immersive feeling of two-time Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell’s fiction (Cloud Atlas), the wicked creepiness of Edgar Allan Poe, and Mason’s bone-deep knowledge of and appreciation for the natural world that’s on par with that of Thoreau, North Woods fires on all cylinders.”—San Francisco Chronicle

New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, The Boston Globe, NPR, Chicago Public Library, The Star Tribune, The Economist, The Christian Science Monitor, Real Simple, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Bookreporter

When two young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to growing apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths an ancient mass grave—only to discover that the earth refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a sinister con man, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle: As the inhabitants confront the wonder and mystery around them, they begin to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.

This magisterial and highly inventive novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason brims with love and madness, humor and hope. Following the cycles of history, nature, and even language, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment, to history, and to one another. It is not just an unforgettable novel about secrets and destinies, but a way of looking at the world that asks the timeless question: How do we live on, even after we’re gone?

Frequently bought together

$21.88

Get it as soon as Friday, May 24

In Stock

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

+

$18.99

Get it as soon as Friday, May 24

In Stock

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

+

$16.29

Get it as soon as Friday, May 24

In Stock

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

Total price:

To see our price, add these items to your cart.

Try again!

Details

Added to Cart

Choose items to buy together.

Daniel Mason
337
Paperback
59 offers from $6.53
Daniel Mason
1,572
Paperback
147 offers from $1.00
Maylis De Kerangal
696
Paperback
57 offers from $11.75
Douglass Hoover
621
Paperback
11 offers from $16.19
James McBride
48,992
Hardcover
154 offers from $8.50
Paul Lynch
2,841
Hardcover
89 offers from $9.15

Popular Highlights in this book

What are popular highlights?

Alice watched the old man and felt a kinship with someone who had learned to untether part of himself and let it roam, while the rest of him was bound by circumstance.
Highlighted by 721 Kindle readers
Take a man in perfect health, and let him assert against the general opinion, and you will find such man accused of deviancy, or error, or madness.
Highlighted by 640 Kindle readers
I have come to the opinion, generally, that he who does good to the land shall be protected, while he who trespasses upon her will be met with most violent return.
Highlighted by 578 Kindle readers

From the Publisher

The San Francisco Chronicle compares the book to David Mitchell, Edgar Allan Poe, and Thoreau

All homes have histories. This one has more than most.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Dazzling . . . a brave and original book, which invents its own form. It is both intimate and epic, playful and serious. To read it is to travel to the limits of what the novel can do.”—The Guardian (US)

“A time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic . . . Each chapter germinates its own form while sending out tendrils that entwine beneath the surface of the novel . . . As [Mason] floats through thrillers, a bit of comic noir, erotic paranormal fiction and other genres, it’s hard to imagine there is anything he can’t do . . .”—The Washington Post

“Gorgeous . . . a tale of ephemerality and succession, of the way time accrues in layers, like sedimentary soil.”—NPR

“Brilliantly combines the granularity of realism with the timeless, shimmering allure of myth. . .Sui generis fiction . . . The forest and the trees: Mason keeps both in clear view in his eccentric and exhilarating novel.”—The New York Times Book Review

“It seems almost a magic trick, the way in which Mason knits his lives into a single tale.”—Erica Wagner, The Sunday Times

“A treatise on forest management (and mismanagement), a hallucinatory dream sequence, and an anthropologist’s life’s work all rolled into one. North Woods fires on all cylinders by engaging all the senses as it transports readers through history.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“A tender lament for our vanishing earthly paradise. . . . it’s hard not to come away feeling a bit wistful, seeing what we’ve lost and imagining what lies ahead in our probably dystopian future.”—The Boston Globe

“Enthralling . . . the bigger point of North Woods is how much is forgotten or never known. This resonates at a time when Americans are arguing about what version of history students should be taught.”—The Economist

“This is . . . a cunningly contrived and beautifully intricate book . . .”—The Scotsman

“[A] magisterial mosaic . . . Truly triumphant.”—Booklist, Starred Review

“It’s a dazzling high-wire act—and it’s thrilling to read . . . There are a lot of great books coming out this fall but, if I were you, I’d start with this one.”—The Star Tribune

“North Woods is a monumental achievement of polyphony and humanity . . . I loved it.”—Maggie O’Farrell, New York Times bestselling author of Hamnet

“North Woods is the most original and spellbinding novel I’ve read in ages. Mason makes bramble, brush, and orchard come alive with the spirits of their unforgettable former inhabitants. Their lives . . . had me glued to my seat.”—Abraham Verghese, New York Times bestselling author of The Covenant of Water

“Ambitious, alive, and lush . . . 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

“North Woods is a sui generis work of pure brilliance, an epic written with a miniaturist’s precision. Daniel Mason has unearthed . . . a universal story of loss and reclamation. It’s the best book I’ve read in ages.”—Anthony Marra, author of Mercury Pictures Presents

“Mason depicts all of [the] stories with sympathy, sensitivity, and affectionate humor. Epic in scope and ambitious in style, this book succeeds on all counts. Highly recommended.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“Readers, too, will find themselves in an entrancing fictional realm . . . Like the house at its center, a book that is multitudinous and magical.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Each arc is beautifully, heartbreakingly conveyed, stitching together subtle connections across time. This astonishes.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“North Woods is a love poem to the human and natural history of Western Massachusetts . . . wise, profound, chilling, carnal and funny.”—BookPage

About the Author

Daniel Mason is the author of The Piano Tuner, A Far Country, The Winter Soldier, and A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His workhas been translated into twenty-eight languages, adapted for opera and the stage, and awarded, among others, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, a California Book Award, an O. Henry Prize, and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is an assistant professor in the Stanford University department of psychiatry.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

One

They had come to the spot in the freshness of June, chased from the village by its people, threading deer path through the forest, the valleys, the fern groves, and the quaking bogs.

Fast they ran! Steam rose from the fens and meadows. Bramble tore at their clothing, shredding it to rags that hung about their shoulders. They crashed through thickets, hid in tree hollows and bear caves, rattling sticks before they slipped inside. They fled as if it were a child’s game, as if they had made off with plunder. My plunder, he whispered, as he touched her lips.

They laughed with the glee of it. They could not be found! Solemn men marched past them with harquebuses cocked in their elbows, peered into the undergrowth, stuffed greasy pinches of tobacco into their pipes. The world had closed over them. Gone was England, gone the Colony. They were Nature’s wards now, he told her, they had crossed into a Realm. Lying beneath him in the litter, in the low hollow of an oak, she arced her head to watch the belted boots and leather scabbards swinging across the wormy ceiling of the world. So close! she thought, biting his hand to stifle her joy. Entwined, they watched the stalking dogs and met their eyes, saw recognition cross their dog-faces, the conspiring shiver of their tails as they continued on.

They ran. In open fields, they hid within the shadows of the bird flocks, in the rivers below the silvery ceiling of the fish. Their soles peeled from their shoes. They bound them with their rags, with bark, then lost them in the sucking fens. Barefoot they ran through the forest, and in the sheltered, sappy bowers, when they thought they were alone, he drew splinters from her feet. They were young and they could run for hours, and June had blessed them with her berries, her untended farmer’s carts. They paused to eat, to sleep, to steal, to roll in the rustling meadows of goldenrod. In hidden ponds, he lifted her dripping from the water, set her on the mossy stone, and kissed the river streaming from her tresses and her legs.

Did he know where he was going, she asked him, pulling him to her, tasting his mouth, and always he answered, Away! North they went, to the north woods and then toward sun-fall, trespassing like fire, but the mountains bent their course and the bogs detained them, and after a week they could have been anywhere. Did it matter? Rivers carried them off and settled them on distant, sun-warmed banks. The bramble parted, closed behind them. In the cataracts, she felt the spring melt pounding her shoulders, watched him picking his way over the streambed, hunting creekfish with his hands. And he was waiting for her, winged in a damp blanket which he wrapped around her, lowering her to the earth.

They had met in, of all places, church. She had known of him, been warned of him, heard that he stirred up trouble back in England, had joined the ships only to escape. Fled Plymouth, fled New Haven, to settle in a hut on Springfield’s edge. They said he was ungodly, consorted with heathens, disappeared into the woods to join in savage ritual. Twice she’d seen him watching her; once she met him on the road. This was all, but this was all she needed. She felt that she had sprung from him. He watched her through the sermon, and she felt her neck grow warm beneath his gaze. Outside, he asked her to meet him in the meadow, and in the meadow, he asked her to meet him by the river’s bank. She was to be married to John Stone, a minister of twice her age, whose first wife had died with child. Died beaten with child, her sister told her, died from her wounds. On the shore, beneath the watch of egrets, her lover wrapped his fingers into hers, made promises, rolled his grass sprig with his tongue. She’d been there seven years. They left that night, a comet lighting the heavens in the direction of their flight.

From a midwife’s garden: three potatoes. Hardtack from the pocket of a sleeping shepherd. A chicken from a settler’s homestead, a laying chicken, which he carried tucked beneath his arm. My sprite! he called his lover in the shelter of the darkness, and she looked back into his eyes. He was mad, she thought, naked but for his scraps of clothing, his axe, his clucking hen. And how he talked! Of Flora, the dominion of the toad and muck-clam, the starscapes of the fireflies, the reign of wolf and bear and bloom of mold. And around them, in the forest, everywhere: the spirits of each bird and insect, each fir, each fish.

She laughed—for how could there be space? There’d be more fish than river. More bird than sky. A thousand angels on a blade of grass.

Shh, he said, his lips on hers, lest she offend them: the raccoon, the worm, the toad, the will-o’-
the-wisp.

They ran. They married in the bower, said oaths within the oaken hollow. On the trees grew mushrooms large as saddles. Grey birds, red snakes, and orange newts their witnesses. The huckleberries tossed their flowers. The smell of hay rose from the fern they crushed. And the sound, the whir, the roar of the world.

They ran. The last farms far behind them; now only forest. They followed Indian paths through groves hollowed by fire, with high green vaults of celestial scale. On the hottest days, they climbed the rivers, chicken on his shoulder, her hand in his. Mica dusted her heels like silver. Damselflies upon her neck. Flying squirrels in the trees above them, and in the silty sand the great tracks of cats. Sometimes, he stopped and showed her signs of human passage. Friends, he said, and said that he could speak the language of the people this side of the mountains. But where were they? she wondered. And she stared into the green that surrounded them, for fear was in her, and loneliness, and she didn’t know which one was worse.

And then, one morning, they woke in the pine duff, and he declared they were no longer hunted. He knew by the silence, the air, the clear warp of summer wind. The country had received them. In the Colony, two black lines were drawn through two names in the register. The children warned of thrashings if they spoke of them again.

They reached the valley on the seventh day. Above them, a mountain. Deer track led through a meadow that rose and narrowed northly, crossed through the dark remnants of a recent fire. A thin trail followed a tumbling brook to a pond lined with rushes. Across the slope: a clearing, beaver stumps and pale-green seedlings rising from the rich black ash.

Here, he said.

Songbirds flitted through the burn. They stripped their last rags, swam, and slept. It was all so clear, so pure. From his little bag, he withdrew a pouch containing seeds of squash and corn and fragments of potato. Began to pace across the hillside, the chicken following at his feet. At the brook, he found a wide, flat stone, pried it from the earth, and carried it back into the clearing, where he laid it gently in the soil. Here.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House (September 19, 2023)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593597036
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593597033
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.25 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.49 x 1.25 x 9.42 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,175 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #144 in Historical Fiction (Books)
- #185 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.2 7,417 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Daniel Mason

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Daniel Mason is the author of the collection A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth, a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize and winner of the California Book Award, and three novels, including The Winter Soldier and The Piano Tuner. His work has been translated into twenty-eight languages, adapted as an opera, and awarded a Guggenheim fellowship, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize for Fiction, and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he is an assistant professor in the Stanford University Department of Psychiatry.

www.danielmasonbooks.com

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5

7,417 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Reviews with images

See all photos

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Linny86

Fascinating

Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2024

Verified Purchase

I'm not even sure how to classify this story; the genre escapes me. It's slow, mesmerizing, and engrossing. I put it down once to sleep, and picked it up and finished it the next day. It has history, nature, murder, madness, ghosts, sex, and redemption that somehow all fit together. I enjoyed it immensely.

Helpful

Maddie

Liked the idea and writing, but...

Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2024

Verified Purchase

Loved the idea of this book - one piece of land in the Berkshires, many different residents over the last few hundred years.
Mason is a gifted writer, too. The drawback for me has more to do with personal preference. The characters I was most interested in, got little time. And the ones that he spent the most time on, I wasn't that interested in.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Steven E. Sanderson

Place over Time

Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2024

Verified Purchase

Much fiction is place-based, and a prominent argument has it that place is determinative in the transmission of culture. Carl Degler's classic Place over Time eloquently discusses the relationship of place (in his case The South) to regionalism and the degree to which a region is unlike any other. Daniel Mason, in this truly elaborate and rich novel, makes a similar argument about a small plot of land in what is now Western Massachusetts. He has written a saga of the property over a 400-year period. At times, the writing is reminiscent of Hawthorne or Thoreau. At other points, it gets a little more Stephen King. The characters are pretty unforgettable, but it's the place that makes them - and keeps them - throughout their lives and beyond. Mason is able to change his prose style with the period he's discussing, and he brings in native Americans, frontier folk, artists, village eccentrics, and even a catamount to enrich the story. This is a book worth starting over as soon as you finish it. Strange and spectacular, gothic as can be.

13 people found this helpful

Helpful

Book Groupie

A big hit with our book group!

Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2024

Verified Purchase

Everyone in our reading group thought this book was wonderful, which isn’t always the case. The diverse cast of characters, narrator’s humor, poignant themes, inventive structure, lusty beetle sex—truly a delight.

Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2024

Verified Purchase

Have to admit, I wasn't excited to read this book because of the cover. However, it was a lovely, satisfying read. Only way to describe it was enchanting -- like an American fairy tale. Indeed, there is fairy tale/tall tale symbolism throughout the book: Johnny Appleseed, the Big Bad Wolf, Hansel & Gretel, Goldilocks, Jack & the Beanstalk, Paul Bunyan, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood. More fantasy elements that I expected. I love the change in narrators & historic writing styles/language through the generations. A sad book, not HEA in a traditional sense.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Kindle Customer

Worth reading

Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2024

Verified Purchase

North Woods by Daniel Mason is a highly inventive and expansive work of fiction that encompasses centuries and a variety of people who live or inhabit a piece of Massachusetts/ Vermont land. The characters change the land and the land changes them in unusual ways. First, there is the Puritan couple who eschew the religious lifestyle and make a home in the north woods. Then the British soldier who finds his true passion in apple farming. His odd daughters follow him. And so on until the present day.

The author uses different genres to tell the land's story. He uses journal entries, poems and songs, journalistic stories, and speeches to guide the reader. Although I sometimes felt it was tedious to use different styles of writing to advance the plot, it was worth it to wade through the narrative. However, straightforward storytelling would have worked also. The characters were unique, sometimes odd, and always interesting. And the end ties the narrative together in a tight bow. This is a book worth reading.

55 people found this helpful

Helpful

Anahi Villaneda

One of my favorites now, just beautiful.

Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2024

Verified Purchase

If you’re thinking about reading this, just read it. I originally got this for an English class and wasn’t expecting to love it as much as I did, but it’s beautifully written and an addicting read. The ending made me cry a little bit too. Just read it, you will absolutely love it.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Ga303

Unlike anything else I've ever read

Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2024

Verified Purchase

Extremely unusually for me, I bought this book on Kindle practically sight unseen. I am an inveterate reader of other readers' reviews, as well as an inveterate guarder of my money, and so others' reviews always influence whether or not I'll buy a book. With "North Woods," I read merely the editors' description (the fact that the book had been shortlisted for the Pulitzer in fiction certainly didn't hurt, nor did the very interesting cover, which looks like 300-year-old folk art) and just thought immediately "Yep, I wanna read this."

If I hadn't loved this book so much, I don’t think I'd have even attempted to review it here, because it is almost impossible to review it without oversimplying it ... and oversimplification would be a grave disservice to the truly "holy s..t wow" I felt on reading this book, start to finish.

For example, I believe it would be an oversimplification to say "North Woods" is only about a house and the generations of people who live in it over the centuries. Yes, on the surface, it is about that ... a pre-Colonial stone cabin in western Massachusetts, initially, the face of which changes over the decades, as do its inhabitants. We have the rebellious young out-of-wedlock Puritan couple escaping the establishment ... the house's nearest next incarnation, which sees a bloody and fatal conflict between English colonists and Native Americans later in the 18th century (with a fundamentally unforgettable image of vegetative growth in the presence of death which sets the stage for the rest of the book, both literally and figuratively) ... next, a former and future Tory soldier who envisions and sees come to pass an orchard ... the twin spinster daughters left to harvest or destroy his vision ... later, a literary romanticist/naturalist who yearns for a love not socially acceptable in his time ... and later in the house's history, a deeply troubled young man billed as a schizophrenic but whose connection with the property may be more than meets the eye ... and further into the years, other characters with other connections to the house and its surrounding property.

Each of these characters inhabits the book's narrative for a short period of time, brilliantly underscoring the ephemeral nature of the passage of time and human lifetimes in it. Because to understand this novel as merely a human story would be to fundamentally misunderstand it -- as we also see over the course of the centuries the elements of nature which grow, change, and leave their mark on the property, in glowing and gorgeous imagery. In a beautifully rendered narrative
of the natural world, we meet beetles and
see mushrooms. We foresee what is wrought by an imbalance in nature, in real time yet in the past. We see towering chestnuts and elms which will someday be decimated by blight. We see flocks of passenger pigeons numerous enough to darken the skies, but which the novel's central "yellow house" will see go extinct. We see a mountain lion(s) in eras where that cat had been long since thought to have been extirpated from the region, and we later see it in taxidermied form in this same house. All of these forces, human and non, make their appearances on the book's stage in ways that are thought provoking and, impressively, never heavy-handed. We see humans taking control, nature taking it back, and the constant interplay of this struggle until, at the very end, we get the eerie impression that the narrative has jumped beyond the present time and into a future we haven't yet experienced.

And yes, equally subtly (to the point I admit I did have to reread certain passages more than once to be sure I understood), the supernatural does begin to appear halfway or so through the book, and at this point, "North Woods" becomes a ghost story both sweet and savory. And while this may have been off-putting or unexpected to some readers, in my reading, it works, and wonderfully underscores the dynasty of this property and the interconnectedness of all living things which live, grow, fall back, creep forward, die, and then ultimately continue to live upon it, even after their corporeal forms have ceased to exist.

It is unfortunate that the reviewer who read, by the sounds of the review, perhaps 15 pages of the book, and called it racist because of a historically accurate depiction of 17th century English colonial views toward Native Americans. Should a character living in the 17th century have spoken or thought like someone from the 21st? That certainly wouldn't make for very accurate historical fiction. Why make a sweeping generalization of a several-hundred-pages long book after admittedly reading only a tiny part of it? Rhetorical...

In the meantime, highest praise from this humble reader. "North Woods" will stick with me for a long time.

109 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

prairiegirl

Excellent book! Couldn't put it down.

Reviewed in Canada on April 20, 2024

Verified Purchase

One of the best books I've read in a long time. Couldn't put it down.

Lorena

Profound

Reviewed in Mexico on April 15, 2024

Verified Purchase

Que los bosques nos sean eternos.

Translate review to English

CHARVOLEN A.

Very enjoyable.

Reviewed in France on May 7, 2024

Verified Purchase

Nature and time melt into in a soft continuum involving a variety of souls.

Reg

Weird but wonderful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 9, 2024

Verified Purchase

I started North Woods with very little idea of what it was about, barring the typically vague synopsis on the back. Good choice: right from the start, it is arrestingly well written, with wonderfully readable but beautifully descriptive prose, plus an occasional good eye for a gag. Fundamentally it is a selection of short stories centred on a yellow house in the woods of Massachusetts, using the lives, triumphs and disasters of people who lived in it or somehow came within its orbit, to address multiple themes. Beneath the surface level of human character development though, it is overwhelmingly about the environment, about trees, and about how mankind interacts with that environment, for good or ill. I'm not generally a short story fan, but the author has created a wonderfully rich set of characters, and his descriptions of the house and its ever-changing face and uses are stunningly good - and there are always connections, some very surprising, some which will have you leafing back to remember who did what.

North Woods is great from start to finish, but I felt it got better and better as it progressed - probably because the connections start to be clearer - and the last section is achingly beautiful in both prose and subject matter with an ending that I found myself re-reading immediately.

One of the best novels I have read in some time.

4 people found this helpful

Dr. Alexander Laub

Geschichte um eine Hütte in den Bergen durch Jahrhunderte hindurch

Reviewed in Germany on November 1, 2023

Verified Purchase

Reizend wird die Geschichte der Bewohner einer Hütte/ eines Hauses in einem schönen Wald erzählt, durch die Jahrhunderte seit der Zeit der ersten weißen Siedler in Amerika hindurch. Dort wachsen die köstlichsten Äpfel, ein Maler findet Zuflucht, ein Industrieller möchte dort jagen, ein Bewohner ist paranoid erkrankt. Das Geschichtspanorama im Kleinen findet seine Entsprechung in detaillierten botanischen sowie medizinischen Darstellungen.

One person found this helpful

Translate review to English

See more reviews

Return this item for free

Return this item for free

Follow the author

Image Unavailable

North Woods: A Novel Hardcover – September 19, 2023

Purchase options and add-ons

Frequently bought together

Similar items that may deliver to you quickly

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

About the Author

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Product details

Videos for this product

Review of North Woods by Daniel Mason | Worth a read?

Videos for this product

North Woods by Daniel Mason

About the author

Daniel Mason

Customer reviews

Reviews with images

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Prime includes:

Follow the author

North Woods: A Novel Hardcover – September 19, 2023

Purchase options and add-ons

Frequently bought together

Similar items that may deliver to you quickly

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

About the Author

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Product details

Videos

Videos for this product

Review of North Woods by Daniel Mason | Worth a read?

Videos for this product

North Woods by Daniel Mason

About the author

Daniel Mason

Customer reviews

Reviews with images

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries