Same! But I think Daniel Mason is pushing back (to my dismay, at times).
In the final pages of the novel, even Nora’s description of the afterlife, with all its freedoms, is bittersweet. She is an eternal witness to:
Many good days, filled with beauty, that give respite from what could be an unrelenting grief.
I must be a rather dark person. 
There’s nothing about the visceral descriptions of death or grief that bothers me in this book (it didn’t occur to me until I read others’ takes that this was an especially dark book). I guess like the light and the dark existing side by side, or one within the other. It rings true to me. We all have our devils and our angels, and I think the light is more beautiful if you also see the dark.
I get that not everyone wants to read about it though!
I have no problem with both light and darkness in a book, but I did feel sometimes, like the author was just going dark to be mean to me the reader. The one, that most bothered me was the tale of the twin sisters.
I totally get what you’re saying. While I didn’t feel that way about this particular book, I tried to read A Little Life years ago and the darkness felt more about seeing how much we could take as readers.
A couple additional comments … In addition to growing up in/being familiar with the area where the book takes place, I also have identical twin brothers. Fortunately they aren’t a real life example of the light and dark sides of humanity! 
I have a minor quibble with Mason about a detail at the beginning of Chapter 8, where the story of the journey of the elm tree destroying spores begins. The spores are in the elm trees on the property of a Girl Scout summer camp. Mason writes “… the mighty finger of Blame points clearly toward the interstate, the Girl Scouts of America, and eros.” Here’s my quibble – the Boy Scouts are officially the “Boy Scouts of America,” but the Girl Scouts are not, and have never been. They are officially “Girl Scouts of the United States of America,” or, more commonly, “Girl Scouts of the USA.” (I was President of my local Girl Scout Council in CT; you learn these things during President’s training!)
@Mary13 regarding the dark aspects, and threads.
The most terrifying section for me was when Lillian was being hunted down by the pen pal Harlan Kane. Had she come to a bloody gruesome end then, I might have abandoned the book.
The gruesome ending for the twins is discussed here, Mason was aware of the biblical comparisons of Cain and Abel, and gave thought to this.
“ Josie: There was a really lengthy online discussion about some biblical influences in your book. People were comparing the Cain and Abel story to the one of Alice and Mary, and they were talking a lot about how the original couple that began your book was very similar to Adam and Eve and, you know, the motif of the apples. I was curious if you actually did take any influences from spiritual texts or real people.”
“ Mr. Mason:
It’s so interesting. It’s wonderful to think about the afterlife of a book and imagine people’s conversations. I mean, I think that the biblical references were inescapable for me. So, you know, North Woods begins with a founding story, in an Eden-like setting. And it’s impossible to write about a couple who find themselves in a state of nature without having the story of Genesis looming over you. I just knew it was there from the start. And in some ways the question was how much of this can I engage in a way that can lead somewhere exciting for a reader without being too obvious? You know, there’s no serpent. When it came to picking names, I liked the name Alice, but I was careful about its similarity to Abel. I wanted to be careful, to make sure her sister’s name didn’t begin with a C. I felt that would be hitting the nail on the head a little bit too directly. The wonderful part about allusion is that you have these other texts that do the work for you. In some ways, isn’t it wonderful to be able to describe a couple in the woods? I have my, I don’t know, 10 pages about them, but if the illusion functions correctly, it brings in this whole other world for a reader. I hope that then adds to the story without me actually having to do much more work. So I’d say it’s lovely when it happens correctly, but in this one, because I was aware that I was in this territory, I wanted to avoid a heavy handed touch. The challenge was to keep those references without hitting the reader over the head.
Mr. Mason:
Great. Okay. I’m glad. Making these decisions always leads to an interesting place. Like I mentioned, I loved the name Alice. There’s, you know, a magical quality about Alice, in terms of allusion. We’re all kind of primed to think of Alice as a character entering strange new worlds. It’s a lovely name. When I was thinking of their names, I thought of the name Mary. And by accident, I realised, and this is referenced very briefly in passing the book, but their names together, if you take Mary’s initial and you put in front of Alice, it forms the word malice.”
“ Mr. Mason:
But that’s even secondary to the cooler thing. M-A-L-U-S is the Latin name for Apple. I love the idea that their names are together, like when they carved their names onto the trees; that’s sort of what happens. Again, I wouldn’t expect anyone to know this. As their names sort of fade on the tree, I think this is still there in the book. Maybe I’ll check it. The way I imagined it, the “M” is kept from Mary’s name, and then Alice’s name remains. Their father, when he briefly thinks of their names, notes it sounds like the word “malice”. I love that this was totally accidental. But to think all of a sudden their names combined creates the Latin world for Apple was incredible. These accidental things tend just to happen.”
I have to admit that I’m finding the discussion of the book here more enjoyable than the book itself ; )
At first I thougt Mary murdered Alice because she didn’t want to be alone, but really the jealousy began during the apple ( thread) game with father, about selecting the fairest of them all, and in a second pause, Mary knew it was Alice
What is the story of Cain and Abel?
Article. Cain and Abel are the first two sons of Adam and Eve after they were expelled from the Garden of Eden in the biblical book of Genesis. According to the biblical story, Cain killed Abel because God accepted Abel’s sacrifice but rejected Cain’s. With this act of jealousy, Cain became the first murderer.
Somewhere, there’s a Girl Scout with an axe, waiting on the other side for Daniel Mason.
@Mary13 pretty sure you wouldn’t enjoy masons other books, which must be darker than Northwoods according to the author
Unlike his other novels, however, North Woods possesses a magician-like sleight of hand that allows the tone to shift beautifully between emotional intensity and the puncturing of that intensity with humor and lightness. His earlier books, he admitted, were more earnest, “whereas now, with this…the mission was to explore and have fun or try different voices or see what happened or watch what happened.”
All right, going out on a limb a little here, for those who want some light and joy! I just read the sweetest children’s book, The Yellow Bus by Loren Long. It took me all of five minutes … but the illustrations are amazing! The author/illustrator built a whole mini 3-D town (in pandemic times) and drew from that.
From a creepy yellow house to a joyful yellow bus … the video quotes the author saying it is “a contemplative exploration on the passage of time and one’s purpose in life.”
No ghosts tho 
Even though I didn’t love the book, as soon as I’d finished it I knew it would make for a great discussion! I’d say it’s just about perfect that way. Some people are guaranteed to love it, others will hate it, and most will like it with reservations. And there so much meat in it to pull out and dissect. (Is that too gory a metaphor?)
In another life I would have been a children’s book illustrator. I took a couple of years off when my kids were young and got some feedback from editors, but never ended up getting one published. It was a lot of fun while I was doing it though.
I love the idea of this book, if only I had some grandkids!
I have a grandson and guess what book I’m about to order for him. Thanks for the tip, @jollymama!
And 29% on Amazon thanks ……grandkids love school bus
A number of people have said they disliked the linked short story format. I hadn’t thought about that before, but I realize that approach–and novels with alternating voices in different chapters–is something I really DO like. Some of my favorite books are like that: Let the Great World Spin (although I didn’t read it with this group), The History of Love (by Nicole Krauss), to name just two. They makes me approach the story in different ways, from different perspectives, making it richer for me.
I’ve found myself looking at the landscape around me differently since I finished, wondering “what used to be here?” and “what might be here 100 years from now?” The very next day I drove the Mass Turnpike to western Mass right past the area where the elm bark beetle started its travels. The office building on the lot behind my house used to be a field, my neighbors say; my brother’s neighborhood in Indiana was only recently farmland. A lot more of nature is gone now rather than new, but new trees are planted, too.
As the ghost of Nora put it, “the only way to understand the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change.”
@buenavista same here, went for two mile walk, and looked at the woods differently !
And, as fate would have it read colum Mccann’s Ny times article today about Petit’s famous tower walk,
50 th anniversary
Thanks for that [Hudson River School Art Trail] (Hudson River School Art Trail — Hudson River Art Trail) info, @mathmom! I just wish I could get those images to stop flipping to the next one so I could examine them more closely! I’ve visited the Thomas Cole site, and I think they did have some info there about how the nearby landscape in his paintings had changed since he painted them.
Thanks for the NY Times story, @jerseysouthmomchess! I think I thought about the book because the New Yorker Radio Hour also did a piece on Petit’s walk over the weekend.
The Yellow Bus looks like a lovely book!