There’s a line in the middle of Country People that sums up the concerns of the protagonist, Miles: “Because who wouldn’t have grown tired of a forty-five-year-old man still stuck in his coming-of-age story?” Daniel Mason’s new novel is the story of an urban family adjusting to life in the countryside, but it’s principally the story of Miles Krzelewski-Petrosian, the aforementioned 45-year-old man, who’s trying to figure his purpose in life.
Of course, in their new settings, Miles discovers he’s not the only “marooned academic” trying his hand at nature-themed hobbies that he thinks will make him one with the place.
Vaguely set a few years after the pandemic, Country People is a post-Covid novel that comes alive in the characters’ search for connection. It’s the story of a loving, lovable family, but it’s also a story about male isolation and the post-pandemic phenomenon of urban emigrants finding solace in nature.
So, what is so special about Country People?
In Country People, Miles, Kate, their two children (Olive and Wesley), and their dog (Giuseppe) move to Vermont because Kate has been offered a one-year professorship. Kate is a Milton scholar whose brilliance overcomes the general disinterest in her field. Miles, unemployed, has been working on his dissertation for the past 14 years, the topic veering from Rabelais to French folktales to Chekhov to trains. Their nine-year-old, Olive, comes armed with her Crayola 64 box and general precociousness, while Wesley, their 12-year-old, is in that stage of life where he views adults as a brainwashing industry and tends to (gently) correct their mistakes in public settings.
Why should I pick it?
We, with our hydroponic microgreens and farmers market totes, are all familiar with—or are ourselves—city people flirting with some aspect of country life. Closer home, we all saw the pandemic’s hotfoot move of Indian city folks relocating to the sunny beaches of Goa and mountains of Himachal Pradesh in the work-from-home era. For the Krzelewski-Petrosian family, the move is to Vermont—and its social and physical possibilities—which leads them down their own subterranean paths, sometimes quite literally. The “country people” here aren’t just Miles and his family but many of their friends and neighbours too. Add to this a group of hollow-earthers, and things can only get more and more interesting.
About the author
Daniel Mason is the author of six books, including The Piano Tuner, The Winter Soldier, A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth—a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize—and North Woods, a New York Times bestseller and New York Times Top Ten Book of the Year, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Award and Dublin Literary Award. He is an associate professor at Stanford University’s Department of Psychiatry.
Join our Instagram channel to discuss our book of the month, ‘Country People’ by Daniel Mason, as we read it. From every-thought-you-had-while-reading to exclusive notes from the author, there’s a lot to unpack here.
