North Woods
Daniel Mason · 2023
A single house in the woods of Massachusetts across four centuries. Each chapter tells the story of a different inhabitant in a different genre, from colonial sermon to true crime. Mason's formally dazzling novel about place, time, and what endures is one of the great American novels of the decade.
The case against
Anthology rules apply: each time you settle in with an inhabitant, the chapter closes and the house outlives them; that is the point, and also the cost. The genre costumes fit unevenly, the pulpier pastiches reading as stunts, and the ghost machinery grows cuter as the centuries stack up. You end by admiring the carpentry more than feeling anything in it.
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