Good Morning America has revealed the July pick for its book club.
The morning show’s latest selection is Daniel Mason’s Country People, published Tuesday by Random House. The novel follows Miles, an academic who has been working on his Ph.D. for 14 years, and moves with his professor wife, Kate, and their family from California to a small town in Vermont. Miles encounters an odd cast of characters in the town and starts to investigate a local legend. A critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “A cosmic riddle underlies this mischievous comic ramble.”
On Good Morning America, ABC News correspondent Will Reeve asked Mason where he drew inspiration for the characters and the plot of the novel.
“My family had come out from California, and we found ourselves in one of these ‘city mouse, country mouse’ kind of situations,” Mason said. “Those were experiences that I wanted to write about, being a fish out of water.…I hadn’t anticipated that it would be a comedy, but I think since most of that experience was comedic, that’s what it became.”
Reeve asked Mason how he managed to integrate humor into the novel.
“When I first started out, I didn’t think that I would try to write something funny,” Mason replied. “I found myself kind of enchanted by the process. There would be times when I would be alone in my room laughing, which is a funny experience. And then as time went on, I really [begun] to love the challenges of it.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
