This novel makes a place the main character. The humans who interact with this place provide the conflict and the sounding board for the essence of a location. It is a unique book and I loved the way Mason threaded the web of story into this central nexus.
A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—“a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic” (The Washington Post) from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier.
“With the expansiveness and immersive feeling of two-time Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell’s fiction (Cloud Atlas), the wicked creepiness of Edgar Allan Poe, and Mason’s bone-deep knowledge of and appreciation for the natural world that’s on par with that of Thoreau, North Woods fires on all cylinders.”—San Francisco Chronicle
Atwood is an icon of speculative fiction. Her worlds are so impressively imagined you become part of them. This leads to a new understanding of humanity and the path we have set upon. I am a huge fan of Margaret Atwood.
By the author of THE HANDMAID'S TALE and ALIAS GRACE
*
Pigs might not fly but they are strangely altered. So, for that matter, are wolves and racoons. A man, once named Jimmy, lives in a tree, wrapped in old bedsheets, now calls himself Snowman. The voice of Oryx, the woman he loved, teasingly haunts him. And the green-eyed Children of Crake are, for some reason, his responsibility.
*
Praise for Oryx and Crake:
'In Jimmy, Atwood has created a great character: a tragic-comic artist of the future, part buffoon, part Orpheus. An adman who's a sad man; a jealous…
I have wanted to write something myself about the great witch trials in Scotland, now I don't have to. This is a beautiful tale that links past and present through family lineage. Maybe not a unique structure, but well done and evocative. I recommend it!
An Indie Next March 2023 Pick • A LibraryReads March 2023 Pick • An Amazon "Best Books of the Year So Far" 2023 Pick
"A brave and original debut, Weyward is a spellbinding story about what may transpire when the natural world collides with a legacy of witchcraft." ––Sarah Penner, New York Times bestselling author of The London Séance Society
I am a Weyward, and wild inside.
2019: Under cover of darkness, Kate flees London for ramshackle Weyward Cottage, inherited from a great aunt she barely remembers. With its tumbling ivy and overgrown garden, the…
Camber Maypole was human once, an avid climber and chief medical officer aboard the launch crew of the Vera Rubin, a colony ship headed for a distant planet. But the day before launch, she was scrubbed for "insubordination." Against her will, her consciousness was digitized and sent through space to a distant moon in a distant star system. Varanasi.
Centuries later, the AI controlled Vera Rubin approaches its destination. Aboard the ship, Seraph Stone, down-on-his-luck farmer, father, and alcoholic, receives a message from a long-dead member of the original crew. He’s told to contact Camber Maypole, who waits for their arrival with thousands of immortal exiles like her, lost in a digital paradise. The message warns of a cabal of digitized minds who threaten the lives of the arriving colonists--if they make it that far. Starvation, political division, and a cult of extremists threaten to tear the ship apart from the inside. Faced with a choice between his family and humanity, Seraph is determined to save them both but risks losing it all.
With the colonists' lives at stake, Maypole begins to understand why she was sent to Varanasi and that there is more to being human than your hardware.
