Daniel Mason
A Registry of my Passage Upon the Earth by Daniel Mason is a collection of nine short stories in which Mason’s talent as a writer of immersive, descriptive prose is on full display. The stories transport the reader to different times and different locations.
The vividly drawn characters in each story are intensely driven. Some are based on historical figures, like Jacob Burke, the pugilist; Alfred Russel Wallace, who shared his theory of evolution with Charles Darwin; and an Egyptian Pharoah who tried to discover the origin of language by experimenting with children. Other characters are fictional—a hot air female balloonist; a mother desperate to relieve her son’s breathing problems in the polluted air of Victorian London; a man who prefers the solitary life in the jungles of Brazil; a doctor suffering from memory lapses at which time a better version of himself appears; and an immigrant who participates in Civil War re-enactments to cultivate a sense of belonging.
Mason injects science, technology, fantasy, and humor in this original and thought-provoking collection packaged in masterful writing. He demonstrates his consummate story-telling skills by immersing the reader in evocative prose and vivid characters. The stories are compelling. Each has a different flavor, but each delves deeply into a character’s interiority to depict the character’s state of mind when confronted with a challenge. And as he has amply demonstrated in this and in his novels, Daniel Mason has a vibrant imagination. His range is both wide and breath-taking.