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North Woods

by Daniel Mason (Goodreads Author)

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Reading for the 2nd time

read in September 2024

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Edward said: " Mason has written a ghost story about a haunted house in a haunted landscape. These are not ghosts in any conventional sense but rather a recreation of events from the past which otherwise would be forgotten. An occasional fragment of meaning might e Mason has written a ghost story about a haunted house in a haunted landscape. These are not ghosts in any conventional sense but rather a recreation of events from the past which otherwise would be forgotten. An occasional fragment of meaning might emerge, but in Mason’s vision the past, especially of human inhabitants, disappears without a trace, but something remains, and that is nature.

A key to what this story is suggesting can be found in an incident about half way through the book. A couple who live in the house become convinced that former deceased inhabitants can be contacted and employ a medium, Anastasia, to help. She is a fraud, of course, and this is made clear in the description of the various devices that she uses in her act, but strangely during the seance, she really does have an experience of calling up a ghost. This goes unexplained, but it parallels the essence of the book. We really have no way of knowing the long past lives of the people who lived in this house in the remote woods, but through the power of imaginative writing, Mason makes them come alive for us, and we feel the power, the “aliveness” of the people who lived here, and in that sense we do e experience the past. You could even call it a kind of imaginative seance.

The history of the house actually begins before the house is built and involves people who began to come into the area of this western Massachusetts in the early 1700’s. First is a pair of lovers, fleeing from what for one would have been an obligatory arranged marriage. Then a woman who survives an Indian massacre and a subsequent murder. Some apple seeds are spilled by her , and unlikely as it seems, they germinate, sprout and become saplings, and finally trees in the wilderness.

The trees are discovered by an eccentric who is searching for a new kind of apple and discovers that these trees in the wilderness are very flavorful. He settles there and develops an orchard, the fruit of which becomes very popular when he takes it to market. He dies, but has two daughters who continue to operate the orchard, and we gradually learn about their troubled emotional lives.

After them comes a painter who appreciates the natural beauty of the surroundings and builds an addition to the house. His stay there is revealed through a series of letters he writes to an old friend. More occupants follow, including the couple who have a séance, as well as a family with a schizophrenic son who causes difficulties. Interspersed are several ballads, one about a catamont (a cougar) who ravages the countryside. Whether it really existed is dubious, but the mystery it adds to the house’s history is its importance.

The house finally becomes an unsuccessful retreat center, and in the end a archivist comments in what could be an epitaph for the house., “The only way to understand the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as tale of change.” ...more "

Oct 15, 2026 09:55PM · see review