Fun Summer Read #2

North Woods, by Daniel Mason

Primed By An Old House

When my wife and I were in graduate school, we rented a drafty house in Cambridge for a strangely small monthly sum. The home, or some part of it, had stood since 1855, shortly before the Civil War. Our landlady had owned it at least since the 1980s —everything, even the carpets, were teel. During her decades on 6th street she had gone through grievous family loss. 

I often felt hers and the house’s history–imagining what had taken place during those one hundred and fifty frigid winters and oppressively humid summers since it had been built. 

During our own four years on site, we lived far from family for the first time, lost both a young family friend in a tragic early death and lost my grandfather as well, first encountered the surrealism of elite culture, earned doctoral degrees, and, most consequentially, became parents. All of these wrought challenges and changes to our identities, as you can imagine. We lived a lot of life in those four years.

After Dane’ birth, I found myself with more middle-of-the-night moments to think about the lives of the families that had filled that place and were since long forgotten, time to ponder the chain of events we would never know but in which we were linked. I found myself sort of warmly haunted by wondering about this while cradling my crying newborn at night.

Groundbreaking and Breaking Ground

Late last year, a book review called North Woods, written by a previous Pulitzer finalist, piqued my interest. (It ended up on a bunch of book of the year lists, fact). Set on a piece of property in New England, the author follows three centuries of life in one spot–from lovers running from the strictures of Puritan life, to spinster sisters whose codependent companionship takes a tragic turn, to a schizophrenic man whose hallucinations are actually paralyzing illuminations, to critters and plants and buildings and all the way forward to a modern day botanist following the effects of climate change.

The book is a strange mosaic of genres giving us a window into life in the North Woods–letters, diary entries, songs, real estate listings, even the narrated first person perspective of paranormal hauntresses–and despite all that oddity it is tough to put down. 

Daniel Mason somehow spins a series of compelling yarns that he weaves into cacophonous tapestry that somehow prompts the reader toward reflection on the inevitability and invincibility of time and the ways in which we all pass out of memory. 

While it’s a more natural book for winter, it’s still a very entertaining read, and the melancholy moments and tendency for icy backdrops shouldn’t hold you back from enjoying a series of great stories while basking in the sun. 

Buy North Woods at Third Place Books or borrow it from Seattle Public Library