– The total novel of an acre of American land
“Only the Forest Remained” unfolds life stories that span time in the same wild place in Massachusetts, stitched together by the beautiful pen of the American author Daniel Mason and his translator.
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This book is an enchantment, a symphonic score, stories stitched into a long-term fabric, that of a living nature, rendered by writing full of gentle sensuality. For “Only the Forest Remained” tells the story of those who lived on this same acre of Massachusetts land in the Oakfield Valley, the land of the mountain lion.
It is an American novel, about a people of the great outdoors, for whom “The Birds of America”, by the painter and naturalist Jean-Jacques Audubon, is the book of identity alongside the Bible. “Only the forest remained” (“North Woods”, “Les bois du nord”, original title) by Daniel Mason is also the book of pioneers, slavery and abolitionists, spiritualism, 4e amendment, of a violent and corseted society.
Lives attached to a place
The story begins with that of a couple, the Osgoods, who build a house in the woods, settle far from everything to escape the rigors of a Puritan congregation, of a soldier who leaves his arms to create an orchard , of the “Wonder of Osgood”, an exceptional apple, of their two daughters in rivalry, of a hidden love between a painter and a writer, of a story of a beetle, of a mother and her schizophrenic son, of a murder investigation, of a refuge in the middle of the forest. So many lives attached to this place.
In beautiful writing, Daniel Mason connects these stories of men, almost short stories, linked together, stories followed or by letters, poems and traces left by a passing humanity, of a very present and very well rendered, which changes but remains powerful and mysterious, of a house that is being renovated or falling into ruin. This is how we are drawn into this naturalistic and temporal fresco of a wild America, arousing great reading pleasure.
“Only the forest remained” by Daniel Mason, translated from English by Claire-Marie Clévy, Ed. Buchet Chastel, 512 p., August 2024, 34 fr. 05 to 37 fr. 80.
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Olivier Bot has been deputy editor-in-chief since 2017, head of the World section between 2011 and 2017. Alexandre de Varennes Press Prize. Author of “Search and investigate with the internet” at Presses universitaire de Grenoble.More info
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