Daniel Mason’s novels are underrated to a degree I think almost verges on criminal. I have pressed copies of North Woods, his 2023 bestseller, into the hands of multiple friends and have a 100 per cent strike rate: it is that good. The premise can seem a little dry: the story of a single house in the New England woods, told over the 400 years of its existence. Along the way, there is comedy, tragedy, murder, lost love, poetry, weird sex scenes between beetles. “The only way to understand the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change” is a phrase that comes late in the book, and it typifies the simply beautiful writing of this book. It is funny and sad and meaningful, and pretty close to perfect as a narrative.
Country People is a return to New England, this time a Vermont college town; the house is ramshackle but not central to the tale. Instead, we have Miles, husband of Kate and father of Wesley and Olive, a man devoted to this family and, in theory, to his years-old and unfinished dissertation on Russian folktales. The family moves from California for the year after Kate lands a visiting professorship to teach on Milton and Paradise Lost. The book is contemporary; there are references to post-pandemic living and the impact of Zoom schooling on their kids, and there is a dreaminess to the folksy manner of small-town American living that is perhaps especially palatable this week following the midterms result.
Miles is a collector of acquaintances and interests, and it is the drifting enthusiasm that is hinted as the reason for his lack of professional success. While his wife and children clearly adore him, he cannot shake the lingering feeling that they are disappointed by his quasi failure to launch. A reset in New England might just be the catalyst for the rebirth of his academic career: but first there are hikes, and fairytales to spin for the children, and a charming local radio hour to listen to. Lurking underneath the charm of their adopted town is a strange and dark local legend that soon draws Miles into its web.
Country People feels smaller in scale than North Woods, but what shimmers in it is the depth of the supporting characters, all crafted by Mason with humour and humanity. From a manosphere-adjacent hollow earth theorist (think a flat earther, but significantly more deranged) who runs local ecology tours but specialises more in gossiping about celebrity visitors (Beyonce, he tells them solemnly, did not break in her luxury hiking boots and the resulting blisters resulted in complications for her upcoming tour), to “lapsed biochemist” Andrei Abramov, there is a delight in spending time with them. Slow Horses author Mick Herron praised Country People as “the book of the summer”, and its earnest celebration of the good to be found in ordinary humans is about as far from Jackson Lamb and Park antics as you can get.