PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- This incandescent novel is set in one patch of Massachusetts woodland over the course of centuries. A Puritan couple, a woman captured by Native Americans, a colonial British soldier-turned-orchardist, spinster sisters, an escaped slave, a reclusive artist, a rich industrialist and his family, a pulp crime writer, a poverty-stricken academic – the rich cast which populate and haunt this book. Their storylines intertwine with denizens of the woods, and the trees themselves are important components of this entrancing and absorbing novel. Very finely written in ways that capture the differing voices. At times surprising and wholeheartedly recommended! Lindy
Daniel Mason is a doctor and author of The Piano Tuner (2002), A Far Country (2007), The Winter Soldier (2018), and A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth (2020), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His work has been translated into 28 languages, adapted for opera and the stage, and awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His short stories and essays have been awarded two Pushcart Prizes, a National Magazine Award and an O. Henry Prize. He is an assistant professor in the Stanford University Department of Psychiatry. He currently lives in Palo Alto, CA.
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- This incandescent novel is set in one patch of Massachusetts woodland over the course of centuries. A Puritan couple, a woman captured by Native Americans, a colonial British soldier-turned-orchardist, spinster sisters, an escaped slave, a reclusive artist, a rich industrialist and his family, a pulp crime writer, a poverty-stricken academic – the rich cast which populate and haunt this book. Their storylines intertwine with denizens of the woods, and the trees themselves are important components of this entrancing and absorbing novel. Very finely written in ways that capture the differing voices. At times surprising and wholeheartedly recommended! Lindy
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 * 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. I loved it -- Maggie O’Farrell 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 * Ambitious, alive, and lush with generosity, North Woods is an immersive sprint through time. It offers an inventive portrait of the individual and the collective, a vivid history of a cabin and a country, inhabiting each of its characters with a compassion that took my breath away. I emerged from this book as though from an enchanted forest, covered in leaves and changed by what I had seen there. Electrifying -- Tess Gunty, author of THE RABBIT HUTCH North Woods is a sui generis work of pure brilliance, an epic written with a miniaturist's precision. Daniel Mason has unearthed, in the centuries-spanning history of a single New England home, a universal story of loss and reclamation. This is the best book I've read in ages -- Anthony Marra, New York Times bestselling author of MERCURY PICTURES PRESENTS Virtuosic, astonishing, gorgeously vivid -- Alison O'Keeffe * Bookseller * 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 * A magisterial mosaic . . . truly triumphant * Booklist *
