What a perplexing cover. We have that natural landscape and then an obvious pink paint drip through it. The God of the Woods by Liz Moore is about two children who disappear from a remote Adirondack location. Chapters alternate points of view, but the main focus is on the rich Van Laar family that has a son, one who is the sole heir (intentionally sole) of his family’s banking business. Yearly, the family hosts a large party, during which guests get drunk, play games, and stay for a week.
But after the son is eight and disappears in the woods from the family’s remote manse, his parents have a second child. The second child, a girl, is wild and uncontrollable, frustrating her parents, who send her to a nearby summer camp that the Van Laars own because the original Van Laar who had the manse built was an eccentric. She, too, disappears. Where did the children go?
It takes 476 pages for Moore to get us through the mystery, which veers its focus from children and counselors at the camp, to the parents of the missing children meeting and getting married, then swerving again to the local police and townspeople. Thankfully, the chapters and characters are not hard to keep track of. Each chapter says who the narrator is, and when we cross timelines, Moore lets you know by bolding when we are:
Those same dates remain at the top, so when we switch settings, I had zero problems following along. Quite clever! While I was engrossed, excited to read the perspectives of each character, eager to find out what happened to the two missing siblings — missing about fifteen years apart — I found the list of suspects improbable. Moore gives us too many people with good motives motives. Still, I did not guess the conclusion, so Moore deftly leads readers away from the answers. To be fair, there are several characters in The God of the Woods, meaning it’s possible several suspects with strong motives makes sense. Afterall, we have campers, counselors, camp staff, townies, and the rich Van Laar family that oversees it all, and we have invited thirty-odd guests for a week-long decadent bash celebrating the 100th anniversary of the manse being built.
I suppose my final takeaway was that I could not put Moore’s book down, despite feeling slightly irritated that I was led astray by red herrings so many times. A healthy cutting of the cast list and a focus on relationships that were only hinted at would have made Moore’s novel a tighter read.
Grab the Lapels 
This sounds really interesting, despite your minor gripes! I like the bolded year at the top to indicate different timelines. Almost all contemporary crime needs a harder edit, in my view – I think there ought to be very good reasons if any crime novel is straying over about 300 pages, but so often it just means more unnecessary twists and red herrings. I will look to see if this is at the library!
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That’s a good point about most crime novels needing a good edit. I remember several years ago when pretty much all of the bloggers were complaining about how bloated novels had become. It was odd how all of a sudden everything was over 300 pages. Also, it’s very challenging to write about a book that I couldn’t put down, but had qualms with at the end. I hope you do read it and enjoy it.
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I never thought I would read one of your reviews and start getting hyped up about user interface design. 🤣 One of the things my team does at work is design the touchscreen controls faculty use to operate the classroom tech. The more I learn about design, the more frustrated I get at the terrible interface designs all around us every day. I once did a presentation at a conference about interface design and had people pointing out poor UI design on doorways for the rest of the conference. I’ve read several books where separate timelines or perspectives made the book challenging to follow. Using a list of the timeframes and bolding the one for the chapter adds a few smart design choices. The reader knows at a glance that the story happens in different timeframes, how many different timeframes they will be seeing, what the dates are, and which is now. The choice of layout provides a mental bookmark of which things are happening at which time based on the physical position in the list. You may not remember that an event happened on a specific date, but you may remember that it happened in the timeframe second from the left. Very clever! Did the odd dripping paint thing on the cover ever make sense in the story, or was it just an oddball design choice?
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I remember you telling me things that you had read about user interface and how it affects us even when we’re just walking around out in public. The name itself makes it sound very technical, but it’s literally just how people use things. I love that you made this connection. Once you start to notice, it’s hard to not notice. For instance, every time I go to the bank by our house I see people pulling the door to try and get out. Yes, it says PUSH right on the door, but there are handles, which tells everybody’s brains to pull.
The pink paint did end up being a factor, but not a big one, in my opinion. It was connected to a bizarre clue, one that I’m not sure anybody could actually uphold in the court of law.
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I listen to all sorts of general fiction while I’m working, but on Borrowbox this one is booked out for the next four months, so I’ll let it go. I wonder what the reader does about the timeline – Just reads the narrator and date, I guess. My problem is will I be paying attention at exactly that moment. At least with a book I can glance back at the chapter heading.
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I read this one for a very large book club meeting, and the folks who had listened to the audiobook did say that they felt lost most of the time. Therefore, I think based on what Nick was saying about user interface, this book is best read as a physical copy. Or even an ebook, but I don’t think you do ebooks, to my knowledge.
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I don’t typically read mystery-type books but doesn’t it make it more interesting when there are a lot of really good suspects? Keeps you guessing? Or perhaps in this case, the number was excessive?
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I don’t read a lot of mystery of books either, but in my experience the book is typically set in a remote location, which means the suspect list is really small. It’s just big enough to throw you off, but it’s still small. For instance, I think the last Agatha Christie book that I read had something like eight main characters, but then there were also the wait staff and servants in the house. That throws you off a little bit, but it’s still limited because nobody’s leaving the house.
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I completely agree with your thoughts here. Way too many POVs for this one!
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I’m going to go back and read your review. I remembered that you read this one and were ambivalent about it, but I didn’t want to visit your post again until I was done.
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Almost 500 pages does seem overly long for this kind of book. It has to be an exceptional novel for me to want to invest that much time in it.
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The fact that I didn’t like a lot of the plot but I couldn’t stop reading suggests to me why some people stay in bad relationships. The goods are just to good to say goodbye.
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I like the sound of this. And the structure with the clever chronological signposting st the top of the chapters sounds like it came right out of the Netflix school of documentary making!
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Tell me more about the Netflix comment. I haven’t had Nextflix in ages, but I don’t remember any documentaries doing the signposting the same way.
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Well, when I say Netflix I really mean any modern documentaries made for the small screen. I watch a LOT of documentaries and it seems to me that it is rare these days to find one that is told in chronological order. Documentary makers seem more inclined to tell their stories using the same conventions as modern novels, often employing multiple points of view, and chopping up the story into segments so that the audience pieces it together gradually rather than presenting events in a straightforward timeline. To achieve that, it’s really important that the dates of these time jumps are clearly signposted, so you will see titles or captions on screen indicating the year or specific event, helping viewers orient themselves in the story so they can understand how each segment fits into the overall timeline. This seems to work well in true crime docs, which might begin with the arrest, but then spool back to show key events, before jumping forward to show the impact on victim’s families etc.
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Oh! I think I have noticed that, but not quite to the extent that you describe. I used to watch more documentaries…..honestly, I should get back to it because all knowledge is helpful when interpreting. Anything that gives you context makes the whole process easier.
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I’m glad you enjoyed it, despite the things that annoyed you. I loved it.
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Did you like the ending?
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Yes!
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I like the timeline listing, that’s very unique! I read Liz Moore’s book Long Bright River which was turned into a tv show (or movie or something) and I remember really enjoying it, although it was quite a long time ago now. I also remember it being quite dark…is this one the same? Dark?
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I wouldn’t call this one dark. It’s not light-hearted, but it seems to be mostly about figuring out where the missing children are, despite them going missing about 15 years apart.
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