Should I continue on with "North Woods"?

June 17, 2024 9:15 AM

Like many other people, for various reasons my attention span and/or logistics for pleasure-reading has greatly diminished. These days it seems like I need a book to grab me by the neck and not let go. North Woods grabbed me by the neck, and then ... kind of let go. People who've read it: Should I persist? (some spoilage within!)

Based on reading the first few pages and nothing else, I bought the book, but now realize that it apparently doesn't have persistent characters and doesn't delve into their lives very deeply. Maybe it goes in rounds and will return to previous protagonists to flesh out their stories, but I'm kind of not feeling it for that kind of play. I'm just up to the ex-army guy who rilly, rilly loves apples ... and the spell of the book is entirely broken for me. Based on what came before, I realize I probably don't have to bear with him that much longer, and maybe the next occupant will appeal more ... but if so, then as soon as I'm getting invested, the story will spin away from them on to someone else, and that just isn't the sort of thing to work as a balm for my sad, shredded attention span.

But maybe I'm wrong? Maybe it evolves in a way that isn't so much like trying to swirl a raw egg in boiling water to get a poached egg (not really worth it, imo). Those ragged, floaty filaments just get on my nerves too much!

What do you think? Stick with it, or find something else?

posted by taz to Media & Arts (13 answers total)

North Woods is not a plot-driven or a character-driven book. Its primary doorways are setting and language.

For further reading, the title can often signal the primary doorway. Books with people’s names in them (Eleanor Olifant is Completely Finn or Huck Finn or even The Fraud which is naming an unknown person) are character books. Books that are plot driven are often blurbs as such (gripping, page turner, couldn’t put it down). The North Wood also signals in its title that it’s going to be a settings book.
posted by CMcG at 9:22 AM on June 17 [4 favorites]

If you really need consistent characters or a good pace, you will not get that from North Woods. I really loved this book, and felt bewildered by the first 50 or so pages. But once I understood that it was not a plot-driven book, and that the characters would come and go, I started to appreciate how beautiful the book is.
posted by OrangeDisk at 9:31 AM on June 17 [3 favorites]

I thought it was lovely, playful and poignant. There are connections (some explicit, some less so) between the characters. If that is not for you right now, that’s ok!
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 10:17 AM on June 17 [1 favorite]

Also parts of it are quite funny, and you haven’t gotten there yet.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 10:18 AM on June 17

It depends a little on what kinds of things you normally read and what you need from a book, but I think the next two big stories (the sisters and the painter) provide provide more emotional heft and some throughline for the book (it's not a direct throughline but later stories reference earlier stories throughout). I thought it was really wonderful.
posted by vunder at 10:59 AM on June 17

haven't read it but this Goodreads comment seems to speak to your concerns:

It was ok at the start...nature, apple orchards, an isolated cabin in the woods.How the land carried one to some. But, this read as several short stories - which I'm not fond of. Mid point, I was wondering if it would pick up. My mind was beginning to wander..uh oh.

Meanwhile, others in that same thread are saying things like masterwork and Pulitzer!
posted by philip-random at 11:05 AM on June 17

North Woods is a story about a place/setting more than about characters or events—and while I appreciated its gambit and lyricism (also, its environmentalism), it wasn’t a book I couldn’t put down.

If you’re reading for pleasure, and it’s not pleasing you—then this internet stranger, who also happens to be an English professor, gives you permission to put it down (and pick up Groff’s The Vaster Wilds instead)!
posted by pinkacademic at 1:16 PM on June 17 [3 favorites]

If I'm reading something and I'm not into it, I'll skip to a random page about 2/3-3/4 the way through it. Is anything that I read on that page or the next compelling? Am I curious how the story got to this point? If yes, I'll go back and keep reading. If no, back to the void of Libby it goes.
posted by phunniemee at 2:37 PM on June 17 [2 favorites]

As others have said, North Woods is not plot-driven, nor is it a standard character-driven novel (though it is character-driven to varying degrees from chapter to chapter), so the pace doesn't necessarily pick up, if that's what you're hoping for. Ultimately, it's the natural setting that's the most important element of the book -- not just as a backdrop to the stories, but as a driver of the stories, and also (in later chapters) as a kind of ghost story (of memory, history, and environment). I found it strangely riveting (as well as very moving in the later chapters), but it's certainly not a typically "riveting" read.

that said, if it's not ultimately your cup of tea, no shame in putting it down for good (in a world with a million books to read, I don't carry much guilt for not finishing something if it means I can turn to something else sooner). If you are hankering for some other books in a similar setting, I second the recommendation above for Lauren Groff's The Vaster Wilds, and also recommend Paul Harding's This Other Eden.
posted by paper scissors sock at 7:36 PM on June 17 [1 favorite]

I'm in exactly the same boat with this book. This also happened with me with The Overstory--rave reviews, started reading, great writing, but the disconnected stories just didn't grab me. I tried twice and couldn't get through it. Maybe I just need plot/character-driven books?
posted by gottabefunky at 10:24 PM on June 17 [1 favorite]

(I've also adopted a rule of thumb as I've gotten older, considering I usually have 2-3 books going at all times: if I'm not engrossed within 20 pages, that's it, life's too short. North Woods has held me for 50 so far, so...)
posted by gottabefunky at 10:26 PM on June 17

On the one hand, the book does keep moving ahead through time. People die, new people are born or move in.

On the other hand, it's not just a bunch of short stories set in the same location. There are lots and lots of connections between the people from the various chapters; some later chapters wouldn't really even make much sense without your knowledge of the lives of the people in the earlier chapters.

I thought the next chapter after the apple guy was one of the more compelling ones, so if you're truly on the fence rather than looking for permission to quit (in which case of course you have permission to quit!), you may want to keep going just a little further.
posted by dfan at 3:49 AM on June 18

I generally like this style of book; I’m a big fan of Edward Rutherford, for example. That having been said, I don’t think this will be your cup of tea. We get hints about what happened to some previous players, but not full reveals. And we don’t even get much in the way of hints about the characters you have met so far.

To be candid, I hated the shit out of this book. About halfway through I realized the author was tying himself into knots to ensure we would only get the POV of white people. I thought maybe the ending would have a payoff, but it did not. Apple Guy is one of the only bits I liked. The author seems really anti-hope. And if there are funny bits they completely eluded me.
posted by rednikki at 6:48 AM on June 18