In his mid-forties, Miles Krzelewski is a graduate student who makes Saul Bellow’s Herzog look like an academic overachiever. Country People is a disarmingly self-aware novel, complete with authorial foreshadowing and direct addresses to the reader. Soon, however, Miles becomes entangled with the shadowy Jeremiah Wilkes Society, an association that has consequences for the entire family, not least the impressionable Olive. Wilkes Society members now debate the implications of his Colloquies, and search the surrounding forest for the fabled portal. Daniel Mason’s prose, rich in wry observation, ensures that the darker elements of his plot never obscure its comic spirit.