Tag: contemporary fiction

Book Review – Country People by Daniel Mason @johnmurrays #20BOS26

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About the Book

Miles Krzelewski is a devoted husband, a doting father beloved for his outlandish bedtime stories, and the proud owner of a truffle-hunting dog in a land with no truffles. He is also a bit lost, twelve years late with his PhD on Russian folktales and increasingly haunted by a sense that he’s become a disappointment to his family.

So when his wife Kate accepts a visiting professorship at a prestigious college in the far away forests of Vermont, he decides that this will be the year to finally move forward with his life.

But Miles is a man of many enthusiasms, who possesses, in Kate’s, words, ‘a great capacity to fall in with anyone, anywhere’. Soon he finds himself entangled with a cast of characters as colorful as those of any of his folktales – from a ghostly tree surgeon, to a scythe-mad biochemist, a Shakespearean temptress, and a photographer of snowflakes – until at last he stumbles upon a bizarre local legend, which, he begins to suspect, might not be a legend at all.

Format: Hardcover (320 pages) Publisher: John Murray Press
Publication date: 7th July 2026 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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My Review

I like to imagine Daniel Mason sitting at his desk in his room at Stanford University eating an apple (an ‘Osgood’s Wonder’ in case you’re curious). In front of him is a receptacle, possibly an object found while foraging or perhaps a gift from a grateful PhD student. It contains pieces of paper, each with a different genre written on it, intended to be a source of inspiration for his next book. Will he pluck out ‘historical fiction’ meaning he embarks on something like The Winter Soldier again? Or will it be ‘short stories’ meaning another collection along the lines of A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth? He pulls out a piece of paper. It reads ‘contemporary fiction, but make it funny’.

I found it impossible to write a ‘traditional’ review of Country People. Instead here are ten things I loved about it:

  1. The route planned by Miles for the family’s three week journey to Vermont taking in ‘twenty-seven states, eighteen important wildlife areas, a national park no one had ever heard of [and] forests in states popularly conceived of as having no forests’
  2. The family’s introduction to the convenience food of rural America: ‘hot dogs the color of an old lady’s nail polish’, ‘energy drinks with fascist fonts’, ‘Pennzoil-colored meat sticks’
  3. Miles’s insatiable curiosity and childlike enthusiasm for mastering new skills: scything, skate skiing, learning the Basque language
  4. The eccentric characters: drama teacher Nausicaa, mastermind of the local school’s fully inclusive production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Titus Andronicus having being rejected as unsuitable); The Rat Man of Vermont; snowflake photographer Bentley; Hugh, nature trail guide and hollow-earther
  5. The humour: the transcripts of calls to the local radio phone-in programme The Miscellanous Minute, ‘the only Minute that’s actually an Hour’; Kate’s friend Miranda’s published works including ‘Trends in Mini-Horses’, ‘Can-Throwing Behaviours of Rural American Males’ and ‘Community Threads: Tracing Social Change Through Clothing Labels’
  6. The heartwarming history of Miles and Kate’s relationship and the challenges they have faced and overcome together
  7. The meetings of the Jeremiah Wylkes Society
  8. The Easter eggs’ for those who’ve read North Woods
  9. The family’s transition from outsiders to ‘country people’
  10. The curtain call for everyone you’ve encountered in the book that demonstrate just how immersed Miles has become in the local community

Country People made me smile, even laugh out loud on a few occasions which is rare for me. I can’t wait to find out what genre Daniel Mason picks for his next book. I’m pretty sure I’ll read it whatever it is.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of John Murray Press via NetGalley. Country People is book 5 of my 20 Books of Summer.

    In three words: Clever, funny, heartwarming
    Try something similar: North Woods by Daniel Mason

    About the Author

    Daniel Mason is a physician and author of The Piano Tuner (2002), A Far Country (2007), The Winter Soldier (2018), A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth (2020) – a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize – and North Woods (2023). His work has been translated into 28 languages, awarded a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Piano Tuner was produced as an opera by Music Theatre Wales for the Royal Opera House in London, and adapted to the stage by Lifeline Theatre in Chicago.

    His short stories and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s, Zoetrope: All Story, Zyzzyva, Narrative, and Lapham’s Quarterly, and have been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a National Magazine Award and an O. Henry Prize.

    A Clinical Assistant Professor in the Stanford University Department of Psychiatry, his research and teaching interests include the subjective experience of mental illness and the influence of literature, history, and culture on the practice of medicine.

    Connect with Daniel
    Website

    Book Review – When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzén, translated by Alice Menzies

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    About the Book

    Bo lives a quiet existence in his small rural village in the north of Sweden. He is elderly and his days are punctuated by visits from his care team and his son.

    Fortunately, he still has his rich memories, phone calls with his best friend, and his beloved dog Sixten for company. Only now his son is insisting the dog must be taken away. The very same son that Bo is wanting to mend his relationship with before it’s too late.

    With everyone telling him they know what’s best, can Bo speak up and make himself heard?

    Format: Paperback (320 pages) Publisher: Penguin
    Publication date: 1st January 2026 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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    My Review

    When the Cranes Fly South is an eloquent but unsparing depiction of the effects of ageing: the loss of independence, the indignities associated with needing help with the most intimate of activities, the daily reality of physical and/or mental decline.

    Not being a dog owner I couldn’t completely relate to Bo’s determination to resist all attempts to part him from Sixten, given he must have known he could no longer care for him in the way the dog deserved. However I could appreciate that Sixten represents the one thing that links Bo to his previous, more active life. And that having lost so much else – his wife to dementia and now living in a care home, his own bodily strength and independence, the prospect of losing his best friend Ture – Sixten provides him with companionship and comfort.

    Bo resents his son Han’s interventions, interpreting them as attempts to control his life. I saw it differently, feeling Hans had his father’s best interests at heart. Despite having a demanding job, he makes frequent visits, fills his freezer with food and brings treats he thinks his father might enjoy. His changes are kindly meant and practical, for example the installation of an adjustable bed. The heartbreaking thing is how father and son are unable to connect emotionally. We know Bo has things he’d like to tell Hans, things he regrets not saying but which he cannot find the courage to communicate. So different from when Hans was younger and they used to go on hunting and fishing trips together.

    Bo’s thoughts are often drawn to the past and memories of his happy marriage. Sadly, his wife is in the advanced stages of dementia and no longer recognises him, making visits to her care home so traumatic he often avoids them. Again, it’s Hans who steps in with this.

    When Bo’s thoughts turn to his childhood it’s of less happy memories. His recollections are of a father who was emotionally withdrawn, short-tempered, even cruel at times. It’s behaviour Bo attempted to avoid with his own son, sadly with limited success.

    In the same way Bo knows the cranes will fly south as autumn approaches, the reader knows the end that awaits him. However, knowing this doesn’t make it any less emotional when it happens. Although When the Cranes Fly South is bleak at times, it’s also shot through with humanity exemplified by the case notes left by Bo’s carers which often demonstrate a willingness to go beyond what’s expected. The case notes also provide the reader with a different perspective on Bo’s condition, confirming that he is indeed a very sick man.

    This was a book club pick. Everyone agreed it was a remarkable book and it provoked a lot of discussion. For some members who have direct experience of caring for a loved one living with dementia or of navigating the care system, reading the book was an emotional experience but also one rooted in realism.

    In three words: Intimate, moving, thought-provoking
    Try something similar: Tiny Pieces of Enid by Tim Ewins

    About the Author

    The idea for Lisa Ridzén’s heartrending debut When the Cranes Fly South came to her through the discovery of notes her grandfather’s care team had left the family as he neared the end of his life. She was also inspired by her research into masculinity in the rural communities of the Swedish far north, where she herself was raised and now lives in a small village outside Östersund.

    Lisa began penning the novel whilst attending Långholmen Writer’s Academy. When the Cranes Fly South was a number one bestseller in Sweden, won the overall Swedish Book of the Year, and the Adlibris Prize both for Debut and Fiction of the Year – the first time in the awards’ history that an author has won in two categories. In the UK it was shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize. Rights have been sold in thirty-nine languages around the world.

    Connect with Lisa
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