BookTalk with Harriet Sobol: North Woods (2023) by Daniel Mason

BookTalk introduces readers to a carefully chosen, provocative selection of novels for reading and informal discussion, considering the author’s writing techniques and the character’s personal journeys. Readings include translations of books from other countries and cultures in the search for fictions that illuminate the lives and understanding of those from all across the globe.

This class focuses on North Woods (2023) by Daniel Mason. The focus of this genre-bending fiction is a yellow cabin in the woods of western Massachusetts and its inhabitants over the span of four centuries, as told through twelve chapters that correspond roughly to the twelve months of the year. The humble house serves as the home to young lovers who absconded from a Puritan colony, an English soldier who abandoned the battlefield to grow apples, a pair of spinster twins, a schizophrenic, a crime reporter, a lovelorn painter, a conman, a panther, a beetle, and other myriad characters and creatures over the seasonal cycles of history. Many come to violent ends, as do the beloved trees of the forest, in this historical fiction in which the past haunts the present.