What happens to a plot of land over time? How does it change? Who lives and dies there? How do they live and die there? In North Woods by Daniel Mason, we are brought to a forested corner of Northern Massachusetts and, over four centuries, follow the fortunes and misfortunes of the people who inhabit a little yellow house on a small piece of land. Now this might sound like a disjointed premise for a good novel, but trust me when I say that Mason magically turns this hard-to-nail down idea into an highly addictive read.
It all starts off with two young lovers escaping their Puritan village to find a paradisiacal spot where they put down the first stone for a dwelling, the corner stone for our little yellow house. It’s all very Adam and Eve. They are followed by a Revolutionary War officer obsessed with growing the best apples, his tight-laced daughters whose diverging personalities lead to tragedy, a young slave woman and her infant on the run from the south, a romantic landscape painter with a complicated love life, an infatuated young couple escaping for a romantic weekend who unwittingly brings with them Elm disease and many more. Mason’s novel is a collection of lives connected by a place and the nature that surrounds it.
As with its inhabitants, the fortunes of the little yellow house ebb and flow. Sometimes it almost collapses in disrepair, at other times, flourishes. A brutal murder early on, haunts the house and creates a job opportunity for self-proclaimed exorcist Anastasia Rossi (aka Edith Simmons). Meanwhile, society and nature changes. The paradisiacal spot sees storms pulling up trees, the apple orchard being displaced by weeds, the panther, beaver and wolf driven to extinction.
Somehow Mason manages to seamlessly connect these stories through letters, poems, photos, diary entries and storytelling, without distracting from the narrative. His descriptions of nature are lyrical. It’s a novel about nature and time and humans’ place within both. If you haven’t yet wondered about the lives lived before you, or indeed those coming after you, this will make you stop and think. A great novel.
North Woods by Daniel Mason is published by John Murray, 384 pages.
