North Woods

American National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, 2024

ebook / ISBN-13: 9781399809313

Price: £9.99

ON SALE: 19th September 2023

Genre: Forests, Rainforests / Modern & Contemporary Fiction (post C 1945) / Usa

Disclosure: If you buy products using the retailer buttons above, we may earn a commission from the retailers you visit.

🍃 A SPELLBINDING MASTERPIECE. READ IT ONCE, REMEMBER IT FOREVER. 🍃

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’ Maggie O’Farrell

OVER FOUR CENTURIES,

‘This is a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic . . . The only constants are the land and Mason’s genius’ Washington Post

A SINGLE HOUSE DEEP IN THE WOODS OF NEW ENGLAND

‘Dazzling . . . weaves a Cloud Atlas-style narrative of humanity under pressure and nature under threat . . . Brave and original . . . intimate and epic, playful and serious’ Guardian

IS HOME TO RUNAWAYS AND VISIONARIES, INSEPARABLE TWINS, A LOVELORN PAINTER, A DESPERATE MOTHER AND A RUTHLESS CON-MAN.


‘It seems almost a magic trick, the way in which Mason knits his lives into a single tale’ Sunday Times

IT WILL CHANGE THE WAY YOU SEE THE WORLD.

North Woods has been heaped with praise and hype, and deservedly so. This is a book that treats life as a miracle and demands the proper awe from its readers’ The Times

Reviews

Virtuosic, astonishing, gorgeously vivid
Alison O'Keeffe, Bookseller
A moving, masterful, and ambitious tale of memory and fate
Sunday Post
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
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
A magisterial mosaic . . . truly triumphant
Booklist
Narrative expertise is supported by rich characterisation: in chapter after chapter, Mason swiftly realises his compelling, varied cast . . . It seems almost a magic trick, the way in which Mason knits his lives into a single tale. He links their stories together with a satisfying subtlety that never fails to surprise and delight . . . and he brings well-earned surprises that had me, on more than one occasion, gasping with shock
Sunday Times
Epic . . . weaves a Cloud Atlas-style narrative of humanity under pressure and nature under threat
Guardian, BOOKS OF THE YEAR
Daniel Mason's latest novel is one of those rare books that truly deserves the description "spellbinding"
Observer
Stunning
Good Housekeeping, Book of the Month
Creates a tale of sensory obsession to rank with Patrick Suskind's Perfume . . . Shows us what is possible when a writer lets his hair down
Financial Times
Deliciously chimeric
Telegraph
Adopting a variety of styles and literary forms, and written in elegant prose, this is a virtuoso performance. All human life and nature is here. Truly outstanding
Mail on Sunday
'This is a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic . . . The only constants are the land and Mason's genius'
Washington Post
Epic, playful, polyphonic . . . Daniel Mason's formal innovation and narrative depth combine to transcendent effect, illustrating the wondrous ways in which we are rooted in our surroundings and history
Culture Whisper
This is 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
Guardian
Mason may not yet be a household name, but his readers tend to be evangelical about his talent - and little wonder . . . Mason has the born storyteller's gift of knowing how to reignite your interest in a new scenario even as you're mourning the one just gone
Daily Mail
Mason teases out the joy and meaning in the sometimes small lives of his characters. North Woods has been heaped with praise and hype, and deservedly so. This is a book that treats life as a miracle and demands the proper awe from its readers
Antonia Senior, The Times
Daniel Mason's dazzling sixth book is so enchanting that readers will need at least a week to come down after reading it. Mason is . . . pushing the boundaries of what the novel form can be . . . It's mesmerising and invigorating and an experience that I urge everyone to try
Sunday Independent
Set in a single home in the forests of Massachusetts, the interconnecting stories of this enthralling novel span four centuries. A timely musing on what and who are lost to history.
Economist, BOOKS OF THE YEAR
My novel of the year . . . An absolute feast of American political, agricultural, religious, culinary and social history built around the people, animals and plants that occupy one lush spot in the New England countryside over centuries, it's a little piece of magic
Sunday Independent, Best Novels of 2023