With summer in full swing, I’ve been trying to catch up on all the reading I had planned to do, which, admittedly, has not been easy given the many other obligations that I’ve been trying to juggle as well. Having said that, I’m working through my stack slowly but surely, prioritizing the “must-reads” by favorite authors that I’ve been looking forward to for months. One of those favorite authors is Liz Moore, whose 2 previous works Long Bright River (2020) and The Unseen World (2016) I had read and loved. Moore’s newest novel, The God of the Woods, is her most ambitious novel to date and absolutely a brilliantly written masterpiece!
This intricately crafted, multi-layered story weaves together several complex threads, told from the perspectives of multiple complicated (and often morally ambiguous) characters, to create a wonderfully nuanced narrative that I honestly could not put down (despite clocking in at nearly 500 pages, I flew through this one in two sittings). The story begins with a mystery – the disappearance of teenager Barbara Van Laar from a family run summer camp in the Adirondack Mountains (in New York) – but when it is revealed that another Van Laar child had also disappeared from the same family compound 14 years ago (Barbara’s older brother Bear), the possible connection between the two cases leads to a riveting exploration of family dynamics and much, much more. This is truly a wide-reaching novel that covers many themes and social issues, including family and marriage struggles, parent/child relationships, class disparities and the implications of these differences on the rich vs the poor, gender discrimination, land conservation vs exploitation of nature, coming of age, identity and belonging, abuse and neglect vs caretaking and found family, inequalities within the criminal justice system, etc. At the same time, there are also historical elements that Moore incorporated into the narrative that aren’t readily apparent without reading the Author’s Note (which I highly recommend).
There is so much to unpack with this story, yet at the same time, it’s not the overly complex type of story where you have to read it several times to understand what it’s trying to say. In addition to the mystery / suspense element being superbly done (at multiple points when I thought I had figured out the ending, turns out I was completely wrong), the atmospheric nature of the writing (to the point that I felt transported back to a different time and place) gave this a historical fiction feel, while the extensive coverage of various contemporary social issues also made the story and characters highly relatable.
One of the things I love about Moore (in addition to her knack for creating memorable characters that I can’t help stop thinking about) is her ability to take a subject that I’m usually not too keen on reading about (i.e. drug addiction/opioid crisis, computer science and technology, environmentalism) and craft such an emotionally compelling story around it that it piques my interest and I find myself wanting to read/learn more about the subject.
This brilliant, genre-defying novel is the perfect summer read and one that I highly, highly recommend. If this is your first-time reading Moore’s novels, this is a great place to start, but definitely go back and read her previous novels as well, if you can (I myself still have to read her first 2 novels, which are on my list to get to at some point). I can’t wait for what Moore decides to write next – hopefully we’ll hear something soon!
Received ARC from Riverhead Books via NetGalley.
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