When you’re a bestselling author, and have been working on a book for eight years, sometimes you just have to call it and put it out for publication…wWhen you’re a bestselling author, and have been working on a book for eight years, sometimes you just have to call it and put it out for publication…whether it’s actually done or not. This book felt like one of those times. It is ambitious, and head-and-shoulders above Sullivan‘s previous work in both scope and depth. She’s going for something very, very compelling here, and the historical research behind the plot is impressive. But somehow the whole thing doesn’t feel as cohesive as it should. Compelling premise, interesting characters, that house…but it’s all just too much, like Sullivan didn’t want to waste a single bit of that diligent research so included everything, without fully telling the stories attached. I wish the she had chosen one or two of the (fascinating) plot lines and run with them. Or perhaps, North Woods-style, told the different strands as linked stories. Something is off with the structure here—like the book should have been either longer, to fully show off the source material, or shorter and more focused. As it stands, we’re somewhere in the middle and it all doesn’t work as well as it should. ...more
What Daniel Mason pulls off here is extraordinary--not only in the conceit of the framing, but in the shifting perspectives and, with them, wholly difWhat Daniel Mason pulls off here is extraordinary--not only in the conceit of the framing, but in the shifting perspectives and, with them, wholly different voices in the writing. Trapped in the body of a historical novel is achingly lyrical nature writing, Colonial frontier grit, Alcott-adjacent family drama, Chandler-esque noir, and the modern supernatural. In anyone else's hands this would have been a mess. Instead, North Woods is a cohesive, innovative, soulful triumph. ...more
The crazy alchemy of what Jenny Slate pulls off is astonishing. How can someone be simultaneously that unhinged and that deeply soulful? She’s a wondeThe crazy alchemy of what Jenny Slate pulls off is astonishing. How can someone be simultaneously that unhinged and that deeply soulful? She’s a wonder....more
I’m going to try not to let the metaphors get in the way, here, so bear with me: the two that came to mind immediately upon finishing this novel were I’m going to try not to let the metaphors get in the way, here, so bear with me: the two that came to mind immediately upon finishing this novel were Spirograph, and nesting doll. Jessica Anthony’s ability to successfully pull off a complex, multilayered, fully-realized story of a marriage in 133 pages is amazing. That’s the nesting doll piece � there are stories inside of stories inside of stories and they all fit together tightly and perfectly. And those stories unspool in such a way that every tangent, like a Spirograph drawing, comes back to the novel’s core. The fact that you are left in the dark about what exactly that core is for most of the book is propulsive for the reading experience, and profoundly moving at the end. If you haven’t read Jessica Anthony’s last book, Enter the Aardvark (which had the worst pub date in the history of pub dates, March 2020), I urge you to do so � especially in this, the year of our lord 2024, where there has never been a better moment to read a comic novel about politics. Turns out, it’s also a year where there has never been a better time to read a masterclass on the complex alchemy of loss, self actualization, and forgiveness. It’s all here....more
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