A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth

Starred review from March 1, 2020
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.

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Starred review from March 16, 2020
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 15, 2020
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 Ros�rio, 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

December 1, 2019

The best-selling, best-booked author of The Winter Soldier and The Piano Tuner, Mason returns with a collection of stories written over 15 years. Including a National Magazine Award and a Pushcart Prize winner, they range from a doctor whose seizures deliver a better vision of himself to a mother in Regency England seeking a cure for her ill child even as a bare-knuckles fighter preps for the ring--themes echoing Mason's work as a physician. With a 30,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2020

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.]

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.