Daniel Mason

Fiction 2023 | 372 pages

North Woods begins a little slowly for me, trying to wrap my arms around characters, plot, and writing style.  But then, about page 30, the character of the apple appears, everything falls into place,  and the book hooks me.    The Apple is a character, not a thing.  It had its own passion, purpose, insight, inspiration.

The story of North Woods begins when a young couple abandon their Puritan community and travel to and through the north woods of Massachusetts.  They build a small, rustic cabin to live in.  We then learn all about the people who inhabit the cabin (and change it into a yellow house) for the next, perhaps 150, years or so.  There is the apple orchardist, a crime reporter, a pair of spinster twins, a mother and her schizophrenic son, even a beetle ... we get to observe the house and the forest it is in, through the beetle's eyes.

While the chapters talk about different inhabitants and move forward the story, Mason creates links (sometimes perhaps a bit too coincidentally) among the characters.  A relative, a connection to True Crimes magazine, a lost letter.  And they are totally delightful. While Mason introduces each character and you don't know who they are, you are informed within a couple of pages in each chapter.  His characters are so unique, one from the other, and some you get to know quite in depth, while others are more fleeting.  My favorite are the spinster twins.  Such depth of their love.  Ultimately, such depth of their dysfunction.

The story, true to its title, is also about the woods in which they live.  Trees, animals, flowers, rain, all the  many changes over time.

The end confused me.  This is the first time I think I had to go research a book with the question, "what does the ending mean?"  Once I learned that, it made total sense.  Do not ignore the spiritual messages, the role of death, and the inclusion of magical realism in this book.

And I am left with a question.  If you have read this book, or you do read it, what happened to the two bodies that were under the kitchen floorboards?  Someone must have found them!  What did they do about them?

My college roommate Janet suggested North Woods to me.  She still knows me well, 54 years later!  In case it is unclear, I absolutely recommend this book.  Enjoy the characters, the story, the soul, the woods, the humor, the depth, the visual vitality of nature and a yellow house..

October 2025