A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth

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.

With a rich literary tone and an encyclopedic feel for detail, Daniel Mason offers a kaleidoscope of ideas, voices, and images in this career-spanning collection of nine short stories read by six narrators. The author's fascination with themes and styles of the nineteenth century figures prominently in stories such as the examination of bare-knuckle fighting in "Death of the Pugilist," read by Michael Crouch; the surreal look at a woman balloonist in "On the Cause of Winds and Waves, Etc." read by newcomer Susannah Jones; and the ghostly "On Growing Ferns and Other Plants in Glass Cases, in the Midst of the Smoke of London," read by the British Lucy Rayner. Intelligent, darkly intense, and powerful listening. B.P. � AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine