NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR A WASHINGTON POST TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD AND THE MARK TWAIN AMERICAN VOICE IN LITERATURE AWARD A sweeping novel ...

North Woods is a novel that travels through time, and everyone was impressed by how skillfully Mason wrote those periods. The book continually changes style, from silly discussions of insect mating to hardboiled true crime thrillers to romantic epistolary stories of bisexual love. Mason does a masterful job of writing in all of these modes and painting some very beautiful pictures of different family relationships. The center of the book is the land itself and Mason crafts a novel that flows from the natural changes to the trees and the wildlife to the humans that come and alter the property for their own purposes. It's a good theme and it creates a long view of history that Mason can exploit in interesting ways as characters try to imagine the people who built the house they live in or who were buried in the garden. In all of these elements, Mason has written a great book. But the reason why we're not universally recommending North Woods is the ghosts. Alongside all of the other plots, Mason slowly reveals a supernatural dimension of the story as the ghosts of old residents of the land remain as spirits. This culminates in a final chapter that just doesn't make sense. The reality of the afterlife is nonsensical (where are they in time? do they have to eat? why are they even around?) and the idea of spirits makes no sense thematically with the everchanging landscape Mason so beautifully depicts in other parts of the book. For some of us, the conclusion was a misstep that ruined the novel and Mason would have had a much better story if he just centered it around this interaction between natural and human-made change. But most of us could overlook the conclusion and focus on the strengths of the diversity and power of the writing throughout. This is a true Loved by Some for NUBClub. Many of us recommend it, but be warned that the ending will disappoint, and your mileage will vary based on how much a bad world building step will detract from an otherwise well-written novel.