I love the conceit of this novel of interlocking short stories: the book tells of the inhabitants of one specific house in Western Massachusetts, from the Puritan era and then over the course of many centuries. We meet a pair of Puritan lovers, a soldier-turned-farmer determined to grow the best apples of the world, spinster sisters whose ghosts come to haunt the property, a pair of doomed lovers, a participant in a prison pen pal program, a panther. This didn't have the emotional resonance I find in my favorite novels, but there is much to admire in what I can only call a very good book: the ingenious looping and overlapping of some of the stories, the strong epistolary components throughout, the emotional pull of some of the threads.

What a snarky, delightful romp! Mason says his intention was to write a “serious” novel about Chekhov, but ended up with this: a sharply comic novel about the absurdities of city people packing up their lives and moving to the country. When the Krzelewski-Petrosian family travels from California to Vermont for Kate’s visiting professorship, they’re excited to embark on a year-long adventure—and they have no idea what they’re getting into. The story holds more than a whiff of the absurd, with its small town scandals, conspiracy theories, family dog with a turbocharged sense of smell, and a ski instructor so handsome he’ll scramble your senses. A smartly written, but also silly, escape into the country, plus a serious midlife reckoning. For fans of Mason’s North Woods and Andrew Sean Greer’s Less.