Book review: Scattered tale lacks momentum

In the mix of folktale homage and wholesome satire in 'Country People', the sprinkling of laugh-out-loud moments are not enough to sustain the meandering narrative

Daniel Mason’s short story collection, 'A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth', was a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist in 2021 and his last novel, 'North Woods', was exceptionally well received. Picture: Paul Stuart

• Country People 
• Daniel Mason 
• John Murray, €20.99 

Forty-four-year-old Miles Krzelewski, “Hapless Scholar, Wounded Skier, White Liar, Courageous Taker of Old Country Roads”, is a father of two whose dissertation on Russian folktales is 12 years late.

The protagonist of American author Daniel Mason’s fifth novel has decamped with his family from California to the Vermont countryside, where his high-flying wife, Kate, is a visiting scholar at a prestigious college. 

The family are enchanted by their new surroundings: “… astonished by the smallness of the towns and bigness of the forests, the magic of the streams, the bounty.”

Known for her riveting lectures on Milton and Blake, Kate hopes the woodlands of Vermont will provide Miles with the inspiring headspace needed to finally finish the thesis he’s been avoiding. 

Instead, he is wilfully distracted by a carousel of concerns that include his young children, his truffle-hunting dog Giuseppe, and a gallery of increasingly eccentric locals — some of whom we hear too much from, others not nearly enough.

A reluctant academic but devoted father and husband, Miles is content to see his wife, who is in remission from multiple sclerosis, excel in her career while his stalls. 

He recalls their early courtship with affection: “… she held forth with such confidence, such perfect sentences, that later, to tease her, he’d whisper “New paragraph” when she took a breath.

Similarly, and unsurprisingly, Country People is not low on perfect sentences — Mason’s short story collection, A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth, was a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist in 2021 and his last novel, North Woods, was exceptionally well received.

In Country People, parenthood is explored with humour and tenderness, and childhood tools utilised for colour: “Mushrooms spanning the full range of the Crayola 64 rose from the duff.”

Of his daughter, Miles observes: “Already, she seemed utterly at ease in her new home, laughing as she took off at speed, bubble heaving behind her, the world slipping across its waving fun-house surface.”

A painting of rolling hills shaped like a sleeping woman displayed in the chair of English Department’s home is “technically skilled, whimsical”, a guidepost for what is to come as the author settles into his stride.

The prose throughout is undoubtedly skilled, the premise whimsical, the sentences solid, but much like Miles’ thesis, something isn’t quite working when it comes to forward momentum.

Longing for adult company, and having received a mysterious invitation, Miles befriends a group of Hollow Earthers. 

Their secret society is preoccupied with a local legend of an underground kingdom in the caves beneath their land, purportedly discovered by a 19th-century pastor named Jeremiah Wilkes.

One wonders if a more immersive adventure could have been excavated from the material and artistry at Mason’s disposal. 

Instead, the reader is mostly granted surface-level access to fleeting encounters, in a kooky, affected tone reminiscent of a family newsletter designed to outline rather than interrogate.

In this mix of folktale homage and wholesome satire, the sprinkling of laugh-out-loud moments are not enough to sustain the meandering narrative.

Towards the book’s tail end, we are offered some suspense not immediately resolved, but it reverts quickly to the familiar skittishness with added, and by this stage mildly infuriating, footnotes.

The most profound moments come from the conversations Miles has with his children, and the parabolic wisdom he imparts: “… sometimes people pick fights about one thing because they can’t pick fights about another.”

One might be left wondering why Mason chose such a scattered tale for his sincerely captivating central characters, but as one of his many supporting oddballs remarks: “It’s America, big guy … You can do anything you want.”