NORTH WOODS by Daniel Mason

A novel spanning centuries is usually about multiple generations of a family, but that is not the case here.  An apple orchard in western Massachusetts is the tie that binds as this book chronicles the lives of its owners, and what a curious bunch they are.  Just as I would become engrossed in the story of, for example, an artist who falls in love with a writer, we abandon their story and move on to the next inhabitants of the yellow house on the property.  Then some of the residents never really leave; they live on as ghosts who may annoy a subsequent resident, causing that resident to be deemed mentally ill.  One would expect life surrounding an apple orchard to be serene, but this property sees murders, a séance, a narrowly avoided lobotomy, wild animal attacks, you name it, not to mention the ghosts’ shenanigans.  It’s more like an enchanted forest that is not immune to devastation itself, as it suffers blight, insect invasions, and clearing of the land by humans, of course.  I really enjoyed Daniel Mason’s The Piano Tuner and especially The Winter Soldier, but, for me, this is more of a novel to admire than to sink your teeth into.  I have to say that the ending is absolutely my favorite part—not necessarily the storyline but the way the author so skillfully and stealthily misleads the reader, offers clues, and then enlightens.