Daniel Mason
North Woods by Daniel Mason consists of a series of loosely connected vignettes covering a period of three centuries. The thread connecting them is the sequence of characters inhabiting and/or visiting the same yellow house in the woods at one time or another.
The narrative opens with a pair of young lovers in colonial New England fleeing from their Puritan neighbors. They successfully escape into the north woods and lay the foundation stone that will later serve as the location for the yellow house. One by one, we are introduced to a succession of inhabitants of the house in a sort of relay race. These include a woman captured by Native Americans; Charles Osgood, who loves the woods and who cultivates a delicious variety of apples called Osgood’s Wonder; his two daughters living well into their spinsterhood; an abolitionist; a runaway slave; a famous landscape artist; a manufacturer; his daughter and her schizophrenic son. And, of course, one mustn’t forget to add to the mix a couple of ghosts thrown in for good measure.
The yellow house experiences various transformations and stages of decay and revival, ranging from expansion, abandonment, disrepair, refurbishing, and rebranding. The surrounding woods experience their share of change with the loss of the original flora and fauna and the introduction of disease-bearing insects, invasive fungi, and pathogens.
The narrative is a hodgepodge of styles consisting of exposition, letters, poems, diary entries, song lyrics, medical case notes, documents, a real-estate listing, calendars, a reporter’s true crime detective story, and an address to a historical society. Each vignette is self-contained but drops a seed that is picked up in a vignette further down the line. Botanical illustrations separate each vignette. Peppered throughout are breathtaking descriptions of the natural environment, including a hilarious passage of the coupling of two amorous beetles.
With so many styles, so many characters, and so much going on in this lowly house in the woods, the novel shouldn’t work. But in the hands of a master craftsman like Daniel Mason, it not only works, it works brilliantly. The vignettes are self-contained and compelling with unique, fully-fleshed out, and authentic characters. The ghosts—literal and metaphorical—flit in and out of the narrative. Nature comes alive in soaring, lyrical diction. It is resilient and survives in different manifestations as when, for example, the skeletal remains of a human body shelter an apple seed that takes root, strengthens, and shoots up to catch the sunlight. The same apple trees later meet their demise when swallowed up by oak and chestnut trees. Nothing and no one that is dead is gone forever. All merely transform from life to death to new life in a never-ending cycle. And all is inextricably intertwined. In this hodgepodge of a narrative, Mason is somehow able to imbue the tale with a gentle comedy that pokes fun at human foibles.
In one of the most moving vignettes, Robert, the schizophrenic, believes he can “stitch” and repair the forest with his footsteps. Daniel Mason has performed a magical stitching of his own in a novel that is well-deserving of all the accolades and praise heaped upon it. His content and structure are imaginative; his execution, brilliant. In an astonishing tour de force, he bursts open exhilarating new possibilities for the novel form.