Available:*
Material Type | Library | Call Number | Item Barcode | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Book | Searching... North Andover - Stevens Memorial Library | F MASON | 31478010143841 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Andover - Memorial Hall Library | SHORT STORY MASON | 31330008928446 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Billerica Public Library | FICTION/MASON | 33934004300167 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Chelmsford Public Library | FIC/MASON | 31480011372650 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Groveland - Langley-Adams Library | FIC MASON | 32121000846614 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Hamilton-Wenham Public Library | FIC MASON | 30470001824530 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Ipswich Public Library | FIC MASON, DANIEL | 32122002904393 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Manchester-by-the-Sea Public Library | FIC MAS | 32124001955582 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Newbury Town Library | MAS SC | 32127001249120 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Westford - J.V. Fletcher Library | F MASON | 31990004882275 | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
A Pulitzer Prize Finalist: This collection of moving short stories is "a treasure trove of lush scene setting in faraway times and places" (Alexis Burling, San Francisco Chronicle ).
On a fateful flight, a balloonist makes a discovery that changes her life forever. A telegraph operator finds an unexpected companion in the middle of the Amazon. A doctor is beset by seizures, in which he is possessed by a second, perhaps better, version of himself. And in Regency London, a bare-knuckle fighter prepares to face his most fearsome opponent, while a young mother seeks a miraculous cure for her ailing son.
At times funny and irreverent, always moving and deeply urgent, these stories--among them a National Magazine Award and a Pushcart Prize winner--cap a fifteen-year project. From the Nile's depths to the highest reaches of the atmosphere, from volcano-racked islands to an asylum on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, these are tales of ecstasy, epiphany, and what the New York Times Magazine called the "struggle for survival . . . hand to hand, word to word," by "one of the finest prose stylists in American fiction."
A Library Journal Best Book of 2020
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Mason's melodious, introspective collection (after The Winter Soldier) locates startling depth in a series of engrossing character studies. In the opener, "Death of the Pugilist, or The Famous Battle of Jacob Burke & Blindman McGraw," a thoughtful stevedore in 1820s England becomes a champion fighter ("Burke spent a good deal of time wondering... about how a hitter could be a good man"). In "The Miraculous Discovery of Psammetichus I," a curious pharaoh conducts cruel experiments on children to solve the mysteries of human behavior. In other stories, a desperate mother strives to save her severely asthmatic son in coal-choked Victorian London, a doctor loses his very self to a strange doppelgänger, and a French telegraph operator deep in the Amazon finds a strange sort of companionship. In "The Ecstasy of Alfred Russel Wallace," Mason imagines a scientist's thoughts while he waits in vain for a reply to a letter he's written to Darwin outlining his ideas about natural selection. The title story is a standout, rendered in the form of a madman's ravings, in which a gifted writer is compelled to obsessively catalogue every poignant piece of human existence. Mason is a brilliant wordsmith ("he looked upon the world, and what he saw was not life, but life transforming, sprouting sharper fangs and nectaries of ever sweeter nectar, taking flight as color danced kaleidoscopically across her wings"), and respectful of his readers by not giving away too much. Each story is informed and deepened by scientific inquisitiveness, and rewards readers with understated philosophical insight. This showcases Mason's wide range and mastery of lyrical precision. (May)
Guardian Review
Daniel Mason's novels come slowly - his latest, The Winter Soldier, took 14 years to complete. This is his first collection of short fiction, and it is full of stories that provide the nutrition of a novel at a tenth of the length. In all the tales the setting is historical, so the perils have safely passed. Which is not to say that it is a relaxing read: Mason, a psychiatrist, is particularly strong at depicting the state of mind a character works himself into when struggling with fear, uncertainty or even impostor syndrome. In "Death of the Pugilist, or the Famous Battle of Jacob Burke & Blindman McGraw", the "thick-shouldered, steel-fisted, tight-lipped" street fighter Burke faces a legendary rival, whose height and girth mean "his head [is] set back like some faraway peak". But Burke's fear, then anger, is really focused on his agent, who has set him up to lose the fight that restive spectators have placed bets on. Elsewhere Alfred Russel Wallace, "bug collector, species man" and the overlooked co-creator of the theory of evolution, worries about why Charles Darwin hasn't replied to his latest letter. Wallace is "driven", a characteristic shared by many of these protagonists: some real figures, such as Psammetichus, the Egyptian pharaoh who experimented with children to discover whether human speech is innate; some invented, including a balloonist who encounters a hole in the sky. Mason's themes are heroic - war, exploration, discovery - and where the characters are not themselves great men, they hope greatness will rub off, such as tragic war re-enactor Uncle Teddy in "For the Union Dead". A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth is varied in form (letters, essays, reports), and only loses its poise when Mason turns a touch experimental in the title story, or when the balloonist's quest gets metafictional. Despite the range, and the fact that the stories were written over 15 years, the subjects and settings provide a pleasing unity. The grand pleasures of fiction are all here: rich, cushioning detail; vivid characters delivering decisive action; and a sense of escape into a larger world. The best story of all, though, might be one of interior drama. "The Second Doctor Service" is a tale of possession that stands comparison with Maupassant's terrifying "The Horla", and reminds us that before we face our foes, first we must battle ourselves.
Kirkus Review
Nine tales of human endurance, accomplishment, and epiphany told with style and brio. Mason is one of our best historical novelists, creating panoramas of rich detail, propulsive plot, and artful character development in novels such as The Piano Tuner (2002) and The Winter Soldier (2018). In his first story collection, he shows how quickly and completely he can immerse readers in a foreign place and time. "Death of the Pugilist, or The Famous Battle of Jacob Burke & Blindman McGraw" is--if you'll forgive the wordplay--a knockout punch: 17 short, numbered rounds recounting the life of a Bristol stevedore whose fate awaits him in the ring of an 1824 boxing match so vividly described you can almost taste the blood. (Yes, the title is a spoiler.) "The Ecstasy of Alfred Russel Wallace" follows an English "bug collector" and "species man" who is "entranced by life's variety" to go to the Malay Archipelago, where, burning with fever, he concocts a theory of the natural world: "Everywhere he looked he saw the struggle for existence. He could not happen upon an insect without wondering how every trait had saved it from nature's forge." Did we mention that this real-life, little-remembered figure is also a correspondent of the great and celebrated Charles Darwin, whose return letters mysteriously cease once the theory has been shared? In "The Line Agent Pascal," the titular Frenchman maintains a solitary railway station deep in the Amazon rainforest, his only human connection coming, Twitter-like, with other agents along the telegraph line. "However distant his colleagues were, he'd come to understand them intimately over the years, could describe each man, each station, with details he had never seen," Mason writes. A pair of stories with female protagonists--one an 18th-century hot air balloonist--offer relief from an overwhelmingly male cast. An enchanting cabinet of curiosities and wonders. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Mason follows three novels, including The Winter Soldier (2018), with a collection of mind-stretching historical short stories. Each narrator is in danger or under grave stress and at odds with society. Pinpoint physical details and precisely articulated emotions collide with the mystical, while scientific quests drive characters to extremes. A mother whose son is sickened by London's poisonous fogs finds an improbable rescue in an article about ferns. Psammetichus I of ancient Egypt conducts alarming nature versus nurture experiments with children. A French woman balloonist sees what appears to be a "rent in the heavens." With transporting empathy and feverish intensity, Mason portrays the brilliant naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who trustingly shared his theory of evolution with Darwin. Sheer wonder shapes the title story, a poetic homage to the Brazilian self-taught artist Arthur Bispo do Rosário, who created a Registry for God out of resplendent assemblages of cast-off objects and embroideries during his 50 years in a psychiatric institution. With touches of Borges and Calvino, Mason's fabulist stories are works of tenderness and awe for human curiosity, passion, mad valor, and profound resiliency.
Library Journal Review
In remarkable stories rooted in the past, mostly 19th-century England, Mason (The Winter Soldier) explores the beauty and limitations of science while revealing illuminating moments in his characters' lives. A "species man" wandering the world marvels at the rich diversity of his growing collection, ignorant of how his work has affected Charles Darwin. A young, widowed mother whose ailing son cannot be helped by the great doctors brought in by her brother-in-law finds her own solution with a gardener's help. And a bare-knuckles fighter battling for his life achieves an astonishing moment of freedom that carries him beyond thought and gore. VERDICT Eye-opening stories rendered in precise, beauteous language; highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 11/4/19.]
Table of Contents
| Death of the Pugilist, or The Famous Battle of Jacob Burke & Blindman McGraw | p. 5 |
| The Ecstasy of Alfred Russel Wallace | p. 39 |
| For the Union Dead | p. 59 |
| The Second Doctor Service | p. 81 |
| The Miraculous Discovery of Psammetichus I | p. 101 |
| On Growing Ferns and Other Plants in Glass Cases, in the Midst of the Smoke of London | p. 119 |
| The Line Agent Pascal | p. 149 |
| On the Cause of Winds and Waves, &c | p. 171 |
| A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth | p. 203 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 229 |