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This book took a while to finish, not because it's hard to read, not particularly, but because it's a book that's easy to put down, its ebbs and flows finding natural pause points.

At first glance, this book reminded me of Homegoing, epic in its scale of time. Whereas Yaa Gyasi's novel followed a lineage by blood, North Woods followed a lineage by locale, and in some ways, collapsing time from a continuum a conflation. While Home going felt like a book of restraint, this book felt like a book of excess, overflowing in drama and largess, at times the characters are too full-of-life, bursting at the seams; heaving at the controls by the plot lines and narratives. Which is to say, that there's a lot of plot that happens in this book, in order to justify all the actions that happens here, but really, the plot isn't the main point of the story, for the most unchanging character is the setting of it all. The place that just -- is --: ambivalent to all the transient hurrahs and woes that transpires on this little piece of land; be it man-made or nature, intentional or incidental.

Mason's lyrical nature writing is what stood out in this book. There's a tenderness to the senselessness, almost violence of nature; of death, decay and the cycle that eventually nourishes life.