I tend to be aware of ‘it’ books in the publishing world, even if I have no intention of reading them any time soon. I like to know what’s in the zeitgeist, just to be informed.
Part of the reason I don’t read books right as they come out is because I have a decade long TBR list. No, that is not a joke. I read about 100 books a year, and between physical books and digital books, I have about 1,000 on my list. Besides, as I’ve mentioned, I don’t like being told what to do.
So I would have passed last year’s award worthy literary fiction books, including North Woods, if not for the fact that the magic words were uttered: Western Mass.
You see, I am from Western Mass, and rarely does that area show up in popular culture. Though, the TV show The Haunting of Hill House placed the titular Hill House in Western Mass which is *hilarious* to me for many reasons.
Once I learned North Woods took place in my hometown environs, I put a hold on it at the library. I was also intrigued by its premise, and after having one borrow lapse because I didn’t read it fast enough, I finally finished and am here to offer my thoughts.
To start off, let’s clarify a few things about the term Western Mass. Western Mass stands for Western Massachusetts, and it essentially encompasses the geographic region west of Worcester. Which really, means nothing at all because that is a HUGE area.
One of Boston’s many nicknames is ‘The Hub of the Universe.’ The joke is that everything happens in Boston and anything beyond the range of MetroWest is wildlands. Sure, there’s Central Mass before Western Mass, but why would you even go there if you’re in Boston already?! Hence, Here be Dragons. Which honestly, is fine by me because dragons are cool.
But, if you’re looking for a little more nuance about where I grew up and where our book takes place, I give you the following meme map.
I am from the ‘Blight and Basketball’1 area, close to the divot into Connecticut, or as this map calls it, ‘Questionably New England.’2 North Woods takes place in the ‘Cultured Hill Folk’ area, specifically, up in the far left corner of the Commonwealth, near the Vermont and New York borders. True to the book, it is a beautiful area and very wooded.
How do I know this? Well, I have been up there, and I know enough about Western Mass that I was able to identify a few locations in the book, even though they were renamed. I wasn’t able to pinpoint Oakfield, the nearby town, but Corbury Junction is Williamstown. There’s a theater festival mentioned in the book, about how an actor has bought the house in question, etc. The Williamstown Theatre Festival happens there yearly. Hence, Corbury Junction = Williamtsown. My brother worked at it once, and often a lot of stage and Broadway actors will come up from NYC to perform in it. Mass MOCA is also up in this area, and is a great museum with lots of good hiking trails. So that’s where we are in the world.
Now that our geography lesson is over, let’s get into the book itself.
Summary
*Major Spoilers Ahead. You’ve been warned.*
North Woods is the story of a house. Told in distinct and disparate styles, it follows the creation of an 18th century saltbox house and its various inhabitants until present day and beyond. The chapters each follow a different individual or inhabitant of the house, and many take different forms: there are letters, medical notes, poems, songs, and interspersed between all of these are pages of Farmer’s Almanacs and the different flora and fauna of the area.
The house in question is yellow, and as the years pass, different wings are added on. The technology changes, and so does the house. In a way, it functions as the center of the story: the book is about the house, not the people who inhabit it.
What I liked
Overall, I found the book pretty successful. First of all, the fact that author Daniel Mason was able to succeed with so many different styles of writing was admirable in and of itself. There is an 17th century Puritan recounting of being kidnapped by the local Native American tribe, poems, a late 18th century description of how a man started his own apple farm, a mid-19th century correspondence between two men, and an early 20th century recounting of doctor’s notes. It’s a bit dizzying.
What’s more impressive is that all of these styles felt authentic. Daniel Mason clearly did his research on writing and speaking styles of the different centuries, because at no point did I feel thrown out of the story.
I also thought the book was a much better executed version of Cloud Atlas. Cloud Atlas, published in 2004 by David Mitchell, was revolutionary at the time as it included 6 intersecting and interlocking stories. The best way to explain the structure is matryoshka dolls.
Each narrative in Cloud Atlas is irrevocably linked to the prior one. I analyzed it as part of my Master’s Thesis, and what didn’t work for me is that we kept moving forwards in time. Please excuse the crude diagram, and each number represents a story.
1—> 2 —> 3—> 4—>5—> 6—>5—>4—>3—>2—>1
It’s essentially a pyramid. We build up to story number 6, which is completed in its entirety, and then finish the 5 preceding stories, which were all interrupted midway through with the beginning of the next narrative. The problem was, by the time I got to the end of story #1, I couldn’t remember anything about it. Cloud Atlas is a 550 page book, and I had to juggle 5 other stories in the meantime. It had an innovative structure, and included connections to its other narratives, but boy was it hard to keep everything straight.
North Woods similarly meditates upon themes of time and human connection, but I find it more successful because we are anchored in one place. The setting never changes, even though the characters do. We know that we will somehow end up in Western Mass, at this house, and part of the game is guessing how and why. Again: the story is about the house, not the people.
I was also impressed by Mason’s ability to conjure a location he is not from. That was one of the first things I looked up, so impressed was I by his descriptions of the Western Mass countryside. Daniel Mason is from California and from what I can gather from the Acknowledgements, spent some time in Western Mass while writing said book. This just goes to show you, you don’t have to write what you know. You can write what you don’t know, and do it well.
In addition to its structure, the book also pokes at some of the key founding myths of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, namely around the American Revolution and Massachusetts’s role in slavery and the Civil War.3
For my readers not from the US, (and even those from the US who need a history refresher) Massachusetts is the reason the U.S. is an independent country. This is not an exaggeration. Massachusetts was one of the more radical colonies, and you may recall the whole dumping tea into the harbor thing. I went to college right outside of Boston, and took a history class on Revolutionary Boston. One of the key insights was this: after Massachusetts dumped its tea into the harbor and angered the Crown, the other colonies stood by them. That’s part of the reason that tensions began to build up between the original 13 colonies and Grandaddy Great Britain. Instead of selling out Massachusetts, the other colonies said, yeah, we agree with their grievances and would dump tea in our harbors, too. Now obviously this is an oversimplification, but many, many Revolutionary leaders were from or connected with Massachusetts, and you cannot throw a stone in Boston without hitting some historical landmark.
The 18th century section about character Charles Osgood includes his memoirs about fighting in the French and Indian war of 1754-1763. When the Revolutionary War starts to percolate, Charles Osgood is offered his military commission again, and he joins to fight for the side of the British. This later has repercussions for his daughters.
Only about a third of the colonists at the time of the war were pro-Revolution. The other third were pro-Monarchy, and the remaining third were ambivalent or neutral. This is a good reminder that despite Massachusetts’s enduring Revolutionary legacy, there were people within its borders that didn’t agree with the cause. History is written by the victors, and the passage of time snuffs out dissenting opinions and the complexities of human behavior.
There’s a chapter following a slave catcher who comes to Western Massachusetts in search of an escaped slave. No one tries to stop him, despite many people surmising the true nature of his purpose. (He disguises himself as an insurance salesman, which is a bit on the nose.) Again, Massachusetts has a reputation for being very pro-Union/anti-slavery during the Civil War. Representative Thaddeus Stevens and Senator Charles Sumner (he of 'The Caning of Charles Sumner’) were both Radical Republicans from Massachusetts and huge proponents of abolition. That historical aura overshadows how, again, not everyone in the state agreed with these views.
This is what I think North Woods does best - it directly questions the idea of what is history and which narratives are the ones that achieve primacy. The author chose to directly include stories showing the flipside of popular myths, and throughout the text, we are constantly in conversation with what ‘really’ happened. Characters later in the book misinterpret earlier characters’s relationships to each other based on incomplete information.
For example: in the mid-19th century letter section, we clearly read a love story playing out between two men, a painter and a writer. Later on in the book, we learn that the love letters have instead been attributed to the writer and his wife, which is not at all how they were originally written. The writer’s love poems are assumed to be dedicated to his wife, and are studied in an academic context in this, the wrong, way.
We also see artifacts moved around, a Bible from the house makes it way up to Canada and then back and the veracity of it is questioned, and through the use of dramatic irony, we the readers know what really happened. There’s also a further question of whose bodies are buried on the land (there’s six different people), and it’s fun to see as the book goes on who gets what ‘right’ about the history of the house.
What is history? How do we know what happened? Can we know ever truly know history? What is the ‘truth’ of any situation? North Woods directly grapples with these questions, and doesn’t provide any answers, but does make it understandable how the ‘truth’ evolves over time.
Note:
I think you’d really like this book, but I’m not sure it connects with anything that you teach. But the questions of what is history and how do we interpret documents that the book brings up are really interesting!What I disliked
For the most part, I enjoyed the book. There were a few things of note that irked me. One totally personal and petty, one related to theme, and one that gets into a larger conversation about how stories are categorized.
First, the personal and the petty. I’m not sure how the claim of ‘there are no more catamounts/bobcats in Western Mass’ holds up, as I, and many other people in the area, have literally seen one. Exhibit A below:
I’m unclear who told the author what, but bobcats are around, and as that plays into a major plot point (‘who could have killed this person as there are no more catamounts?’) I’m confused how this passed muster. I have also never heard anyone call it a catamount. I wouldn’t be making such a big deal of this other than the fact that there is a line in the book that claims, ‘They don’t call them bobcats here but catamounts.’4 After doing an informal survey of friends and family from the area, I have learned that : 1) everyone I know calls it a bobcat and 2) catamounts and bobcats are different animals. There are indeed no more catamounts, but there are bobcats, and the book treats them as identical animals. So. Further confusion abounds! I am once again baffled how this passed muster. But then again, the TV show The Last of Us claimed this was 10 miles west of Boston.
Second, the last story in the book features a young woman, Nora, who battles depression and how her connection to observing nature helps her through her illness. Nora’s depression reignites when she uses a VR headset at the Museum of Fine Arts during an art exhibition, and realizes she will never get to see the old growth forests of Western Mass, her area of expertise. The climax of her story is that she dies in a car crash avoiding a bear, and decides to pass her afterlife at the house in question. Because she is now a ghost, she can see all of the old growth forest she likes and gets to observe nature to her heart’s content without dealing with the grief of a changing landscape.
*deep inhale*
I am a person who has had depression, and this theme here is ridiculous and dangerous. Per the text, the only way Nora can live with her depression is by dying and getting to see the forests as they were 200 years ago. There’s no modern day cure that’ll work for you sweetie, so might as well just shuffle off this mortal coil into fantasyland. This is dangerous for so many reasons, not least of which is the fact that the author is a doctor. Given that Nora’s story effectively closes the book, it is a weird note to end on, and left a sour taste in my mouth. Ah yes, depressed people have nothing to live for so they might as well die. That’s what I got out of this story. Nora does not feel like a fully fleshed out character, just a way to end the book, which becomes apparent when it’s mentioned that she visits her parents and her old therapist, Luz, when they cross over. So she had no friends? No cousins? She knew 3 people in her whole life? Got it.
I fully admit I alone could be responding badly to this section, and no one else feels this way. But I couldn’t believe that a doctor would see fit to write this, especially in a book where preceding chapters have deal with homosexuality (which was once considered a mental illness) and the danger of experimental treatments on schizophrenic patients.5 Oh, and she has diabetes too, so guess disabled people don’t deserve to live, either. *internal screaming*
Overall, for what I thought had been both a technically and narratively successful book, it was a weird ending and didn’t accomplish much other than to make me sincerely question why no one thought about the optics of this.
My last quibble has nothing to do with the author or the book itself, but genre. The book, despite featuring 1) so many ghosts 2) so many ghosts interacting with human people, 3) narratives from the point of view of actual animals and 4) so much magical realism that at times it’s hard to distinguish what is ‘real’, is classified as literary fiction. This made me want to throw my iPad across the room. Again, no fault of the book or author here. This is purely an industry and publishing issue and the hill I will die on.
Yes, my friends, it is time to get into my genre versus literary fiction rant.
A Rant about Literary Fiction
Literary fiction is the catch all genre to describe books that are more about character, and less about plot. They are also what are considered the most prestigious in the literary world, and often win all of the prizes. While North Woods is indeed more about character rather than plot, I’d argue that it’s speculative fiction.
Let’s get some definitions out of the way.
Literary fiction, like I mentioned, is more a form than a genre. I liked the below description, as it gets at this central issue between genre and literary fiction.
For a general understanding, literary fiction focuses on style, character, and theme over plot—unlike most genre and commercial fiction. This means that literary fiction is not beholden to certain tropes or genre expectations to be considered lit fic, but that also means it can feature elements of any genre and still be categorized as lit fic. Lit fic can be suspenseful and shocking, sweeping and romantic, sarcastic and cynical … you name it, there’s a literary fiction novel that’s got it.6
Literary fiction in American literature is primarily mimetic literary fiction - meaning that the fiction resembles real life with no fantastical elements. While literary fiction can be a classification in any genre, I don’t recall much speculative fiction being classified as literary. In fact, it’s mostly a fight to get any speculative fiction recognized for its literary prowess.
Speculative fiction is an umbrella genre;
a super category for all genres that deliberately depart from imitating “consensus reality” of everyday experience. In this latter sense, speculative fiction includes fantasy, science fiction, and horror, but also their derivatives, hybrids, and cognate genres like the gothic, dystopia, weird fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction, ghost stories, superhero tales, alternate history, steampunk, slipstream, magic realism, fractured fairy tales, and more.7
The TL;DR: anything that cannot or does not happen in regular, ordinary life is speculative.
Why is this my hill to die on, then?
Speculative fiction is seen as less than. In the literary fiction definition above, it mentions most ‘commercial and genre fiction,’ and literary fiction often positions itself against Spec Fic. Spec fic fans are seen as nerds who live in their parents’ basements who play video games, and aren’t as ‘sophisticated’ as those who enjoy literary fiction. This is a large cultural perception that is continually reinforced in daily practice. Examples: Martin Scorsese saying Marvel movies aren’t cinema, and schools that only teach classic literary fiction in their English classes. The only books I recall including Speculative Elements in my secondary education were Shakespeare and his witches. Heck, Spec Fic novels are usually not considered for the Pulitizers or other major American literary prizes, so they have their own awards (the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, etc) because otherwise they are not recognized as valuable works of fiction.
In addition to this general snobbery, techniques in Speculative Fiction are often used well before they are introduced into Literary Fiction narratives. Then, when they are introduced into Literary fiction, they are considered innovative and new.
For example, I read Trust Exercise, a book I truly disliked, by Susan Choi. It was lauded for its use of unreliable narrators. This book came out in 2019. Excuse me? You know what had used unreliable narrators long before Trust Exercise? Gone Girl published over 5 years prior. The only reason Trust Exercise is notable is because of its usage of unreliable narrators. Otherwise, it’s a pretty mediocre story.
And if we’re getting into books that have innovative structure, narration techniques and time usage? I can think of at least 5 from Speculative Fiction that came out prior to North Woods.
Don’t believe me? Most of my Master’s Thesis was on structure, so *cracks knuckles* let’s review.
Innovative Structure
The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern, 2011. Uses both multiple POV and flashbacks/timeline manipulation.
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell, 2004. Mentioned above about the structure.
The Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu, first serialized in China in 2006, published in 2008, and translated into English in 2014. Multiple POV, includes flashbacks and flash forwards.
This is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, 2019. Two distinct narrators in an entire book based on time travel.
The Seven and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, Stuart Turton, 2019. Once again, innovative character and time structure.
Unreliable Narrators
Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn, 2014.
The Raven Tower, Ann Leckie, 2019. Most of Leckie’s work actually includes unreliable narrators.
Interconnected Short Stories
The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien, 1990. Including because it is metafiction, which according to the above definition, would fall into the alternate histories portion of speculative fiction.
I could go on, but I’ll stop. The point is, when I read literary works like North Woods, I am often not as impressed as the NYTimes or other laudatory reviews insist I should be. Mainly because I am familiar with many of these literary techniques. It’s a Yes? And? Where have you been? reaction. This is not to take away from the achievements of Daniel Mason and North Woods. I think this is primarily a marketing issue; the literary establishment has decided that Spec Fic does not sell as well, and that it’s not as erudite, so therefore it resists catergorizing books that clearly fall into speculative fiction as speculative fiction. Because that’s what North Woods is: speculative fiction.
Per both definitions, it can be both literary and speculative, but I’m sorry, the book includes chapters narrated by ghosts, chapters where ghosts interact with the living - including killing them!, - and chapters from the point of view of both catamounts and beetles. I might have given the ghosts a pass for magical realism, but the animals? Nope. Purely speculative.
While literary fiction can also be ghost stories or any genre, Speculative fiction is not allowed that flexibility. Once something is tagged as Speculative, it is seen as decreasing in quality. And to be fair - both literary fiction and speculative fiction can be bad. But even the best speculative fiction books aren’t treated with as much respect as the most mediocre literary books. For example, The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, a truly revolutionary work and so well written, is often squarely found on lists of Best SFF, but not of Best literary books.
I want to be clear - I do not blame the author here. This may not have been his choice. On the North Woods Goodreads page, Magical Realism is only the 8th tag, and on The Storygraph, where I track books, there’s no mention of the book’s speculative qualities.
The reason I will die on this hill is despite being locked out of mainstream prestige, fantasy and sci fi and speculative books are often the the most commercial. Exhibit A: Sarah J. Maas, the author of A Court of Thorns and Roses, who has sold 3.1 million books so far this year. SO. FAR. That’s a lot of nerds living in basements. Aside from that, speculative books are often the most successful adaptations. The top 10 movies of 2024 so far are all Speculative, and most of the top 10 grossing movies of all time are speculative.8 Sure, we’ll all consume your fantastical books and movies, but we won’t give you your flowers or credit for how good the work is. That’s only reserved for the books that mimic real life and have no plot.
This smacks of elitism, and I am grumpy about it. (In case you couldn’t tell.) And don’t take my opinion for it, our ancestors would agree as well. Most cultures had oral traditions, and the stories that were passed down included myths and tales full of magic, fantasy and speculative elements. Sure, we didn’t know how the world worked, but they were also easier to remember because they were entertaining.
Until very recently in human history, life sucked. Badly. The stories we wanted to read and listen to did not mimic real life because real life was hard enough. Heck, life in America in 2024 is dystopian enough right now, I’d rather read about necromancers than pay attention to the news. Literary fiction developed out of the modernism movement in the 20th century, and while it is valuable, it is one genre amongst many. I do not agree with the American literary establishment’s elevation of this genre onto a pedestal. All genres are interesting and can be done well. I want my work to be considered just as valuable as another writer’s, and not looked down upon because I want to write about magic and elves and dragons and explosions. Life is hard enough.
Sidenotes
I need to wrap this up. Once again, I have lots of thoughts about things. So I’ll leave you with a few final assorted thoughts:
this book reminded me of Changes in the Land, a book everyone at my high school was terrorized with before entering Junior Year US History. As annoying as that book was, it does chronicle the historical changes in, well, the land. The land in question specifically being New England, and how the colonists radically changed the landscape and what effects that had. I wonder if author Daniel Mason consulted this.
I was also pleased to discover that Daniel Mason is also still a doctor. As much as I’d love to just be a writer, as much as all of use would just want to be artists, you do need to pay the bills, and oftentimes that requires a day job. Like I said in my post on MFAs, some degrees directly build on the fact that you need to support yourself as you produce your art, in ways that are not your art.
Have you read North Woods? Are the genres of books you loved overlooked by the literary world? Do you feel as strongly as I do about this? Tell me!
This area comprises Springfield, which was a major metro area, but has declined in recent years. And by recent I mean: as long as I’ve been alive these 30 odd years, I would have not - and have never - considered Springfield to be a city. But, Springfield is the home of both Basketball and Volleyball, created by James Naismith and William G. Morgan, respectively.
Correct.
Fun fact: Massachusetts is a Commonwealth, not a state. It’s one of 4 in the US. There’s no real difference, other than how their constitution is worded and organized. The other three are: Kentucky, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Cue ‘The More You Know’ rainbow meme.
Paraphrasing because I rented the book from the library and had to return it so I do not have the actual quote on hand.
Though I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, both societal opinions and medical opinions have made depressed and mentally ill people feel useless and burdensome for years.
https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-fiction/what-is-literary-fiction
Oziewicz, Marek. “Speculative Fiction.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, 29 Mar. 2017, pp. 1–25., doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.78. pg 1.
This is also the definition I used in my Master’s Thesis.
That 10 miles picture made the rounds when the show came out because that is decidedly NOT Massachusetts, no offense to the small mountains that we do have.
It is such a good book to think about history and what history means, and a fun story to boot. But totally understand that it’d be hard to incorporate into a curriculum - world history or otherwise. Western Mass hasn’t really been a heavy hitter on the American history front (other than Shay’s Rebellion and the invention of basketball/volleyball) so I get it. I wish it was more relevant of a topic because it seems like a much more fun way to consider how history is interpreted and preserved!
You have me pegged!! I LOVED this book (I tend to be obsessed with place-based books), but haven't written about it because, as you note, I'm not really sure how to squeeze it into my World History curriculum. Also, I've only ever been to Boston (10 years ago), so I feel like commenting on the authenticity of the place is best left to folks actually who live there, as you do QUITE well with your catamount count (although that "10 miles west of Boston" picture looks pretty familiar to me, bwhahahaha).
This was a beautiful write-up and makes me want to read the book again and also travel from the cultured hill folk area all the way to the witches and quaint-ass towns area :)