REVIEW: The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

JennieA- Reviews / Book Reviews / Recommended ReadsLiterary fiction / mystery / thriller7 Comments

Marketed as a “literary thriller” The God of the Woods features shifting timelines and multiple perspectives to tell the story of the disappearances of the two children of the affluent Van Laar family: eight-year old Bear in 1961, and his 13-year-old sister Barbara in 1975.

The story opens in August 1975 at Camp Emerson in the Adirondacks. Camp counselor Louise discovers that Barbara Van Laar’s bed has not been slept in; Barbara is missing. This is very bad, even worse than you’d imagine a 13-year-old girl missing at summer camp might be. Barbara is the daughter of the family that owns the camp. Louise was not in her bunk when she was supposed to be the night before; she discovers that junior counselor Annabel also snuck out and is now hungover. All of this is disastrous to Louise, a local girl who needs the job – she is responsible for her younger brother, as her mother is jobless and rarely sober.

The Van Laar family summer home, called Self-Reliance, is located on the hill above Camp Emerson, and the Van Laars have a long and illustrious history in the area. The Van Laar Preserve provides employment to the residents of Shattuck, the small town located nearby.

A search is taken up for Barbara immediately, let by TJ Hewitt, the camp director and longtime resident of the Preserve (her father was previously a property manager for the Van Laars). Given the Van Laars’ tragic history, no one wants to go up to the house to inform them of Barbara’s disappearance, but of course it must be done.

The perspective switches to that of Tracy, a 13-year-old girl who is a cabin mate and friend of Barbara Van Laar. She arrives at camp two months before Barbara’s disappearance as a reluctant camper. Tracy’s parents are recently divorced and her father has moved on to a new girlfriend. Tracy’s dad is involved in horse racing, and she was accustomed to spending the summer in Saratoga Springs, reading. Instead she’s unceremoniously dumped into the unfamiliar environment of Camp Emerson. Her tentative friendship with the odd and prickly Barbara makes camp bearable.

We’re then introduced to Alice Van Laar, Barbara’s mother. She is quickly established to have a nervous personality, a poor relationship with her daughter, and a pill addiction. When the story moves back to the 1950s, Alice is 17 years old and is introduced to 29-year-old Peter Van Laar at her debut. He courts her for a brief period and they are married; nine months later, Peter IV, called Bear, is born. The marriage quickly sours; Alice is extremely shy and uncomfortable among other people, and that’s putting it mildly. Perhaps she’s on the spectrum by modern standards; anyway, her personality comes to grate on Peter, a rigid perfectionist who is quick to anger. Long before Bear disappears in 1961, the marriage is irretrievably broken, and Alice’s pill and alcohol habits are well established. The only thing the couple share is a devotion to Bear, though Peter disapproves of Alice’s closeness with her son.

We’re given the perspectives of a couple of more characters, in different timelines. First there is Carl Stoddard, another Van Laar employee who assists in the search for Bear and gets caught up in the investigation, with tragic results. Back in 1975 Judyta Luptack is a rookie detective (the first woman on the Albany police force to make detective); she assists in the investigation into Barbara’s disappearance. Judy is tasked with trying to interview all the people who were staying at Self-Reliance (it’s the week of the Blackfly Good-by, the Van Laar’s annual get-together for friends and family, so there are a lot of people staying at the house).

There’s also an escaped serial killer named Jacob Sluiter possibly running around the woods in the 1975 timeline; Sluiter was a suspect in Bear’s disappearance years before.

Besides Sluiter, there are various suspects in both disappearances: Louise’s wealthy boyfriend has been staying at Self-Reliance for the Blackfly Good-by, and both he and Louise come under suspicion. Peter Van Laar and his imperious (even more imperious than Peter) father are considered. TJ Hewitt, the camp director, is also looked at – she’s viewed with some suspicion for being suspected of being a lesbian, not exactly acceptable in 1975 (especially for someone working with children).

The “literary” part of “literary thriller” carries real weight here. The God of the Woods is fraught with serious themes – the tension between civilization and nature and the role of class and money in the world it depicts. Most of the locals are dependent on the Van Laars and resentful of it. The wealth and power of the family allow them to escape responsibility and maintain a façade that hides secrets and does real harm.

I tend to like multiple timeline stories, and I did here as well, though sometimes the multiple timelines combined with multiple POVs slowed my reading a bit. It was perhaps a slightly cold read for me, in that many of the characters were unlikable to some lesser or greater degree. Only Judyta and Louise were truly sympathetic (I suppose Barbara as well, though even she is a bit prickly). But both the story and prose were more than compelling enough to hold my interest.

I’ll spoiler one last note just in case it’s something a reader would rather not know going in:

My grade is an A-.

Best,

Jennie

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Jennie

has been an avid if often frustrated romance reader for the past 15 years. In that time she's read a lot of good romances, a few great ones, and, unfortunately, a whole lot of dreck. Many of her favorite authors (Ivory, Kinsale, Gaffney, Williamson, Ibbotson) have moved onto other genres or produce new books only rarely, so she's had to expand her horizons a bit. Newer authors she enjoys include Julie Ann Long, Megan Hart and J.R. Ward, and she eagerly anticipates each new Sookie Stackhouse novel. Strong prose and characterization go a long way with her, though if they are combined with an unusual plot or setting, all the better. When she's not reading romance she can usually be found reading historical non-fiction.

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