Book Review: The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

I picked up this novel by author Liz Moore for two reasons—many other authors and reviewers whose opinions I respect recommended it and I wanted to see if it was a comparative title to my latest work in progress, a novel about a podcaster whose sister disappears from a North Carolina summer camp. Basically, I couldn’t get away from this book. I saw it everywhere I went, from online spaces, podcasts, and prominently displayed on the front tables at my local bookstores.

Here’s the official synopsis:

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.

The God of the Woods is highly ranked on Amazon in the following categories: Psychological Literary Fiction, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Literary Fiction, and Literary Fiction. Because it is considered literary fiction, the length is longer than your standard suspense/thriller or mystery novel, coming in at 490 pages.

There’s a lot to admire about this book, from the immersive setting of the Adirondacks (Moore has strong family ties to the area, with four of her ancestors having moved there in the 1800s and settling on land there), the wide range of characters, from the patriarchal Van Laar men to the scrappy females like to camp counselor Louise, who has been through a lot in her young life to simply just survive to Judyta Luptack, who has worked her way up the local law enforcement ranks from a state trooper to an investigator looking into Barbara Van Laar’s disappearance.

The opening scenes of the book drew me in immediately, because who isn’t intrigued by a disappearance, especially when it’s a member of a prominent family? But the many different character points of views and alternating timelines (it ranges from the early 1950s to 1975) made it more difficult to process what was going on and I progressed through the book. Don’t get me wrong—the writing is haunting, and I highlighted many different passages to study on my own, such as this one:

“Panic,” said T.J. But no one raised a hand. She explained. It came from a Greek god Pan: the god of the woods. He liked to trick people, to confuse and disorient them, until they lost their bearings, and their minds. To panic, said T.J., was to make an enemy of the forest. To stay calm was to be its friend.

I was lured in by both the mysteries of what happened to Bear and Barbara Van Laar, and as a mother, I could empathize what the crippling loss of a child can do to a parent. However, I grow weary of the trope where a character is so addled by drug addiction and alcoholism (addiction knows no bounds, even where the wealthy are involved), as Alice Van Laar was). This book also takes place in a time period where women did not have as many choices as they do today, and I struggled with my feelings about Alice, who entered the Van Laar family as part of an arranged marriage and let her husband and father-in-law’s misogynistic attitudes only weaken her further.

There are plenty of red herrings in this novel, maybe even too many. How is camp director T.J. connected to Barbara’s disappearance? What about the male characters who vied for Louise’s affections—were they involved? Where did Bear go on the day years earlier when he disappeared on a hike? Was the groundskeeper Carl too attached to Bear? And then there’s the mysterious Jacob Sluiter, whose point of view is randomly dispersed throughout the novel. I finished the book still having questions about him, and I’ll probably go back and reread The God of the Woods at some point to see if I can find answers to some of my questions I might have missed.

Despite this being a unique story, I grew frustrated with the descriptions of how the wealthy members of society always manage to get away with corruption and the mistreatment of others. And finally, as in a lot of mysteries, this book would have been half as long if people had simply just talked to one another rather than cover up incidents that would be “too embarrassing for the family.”

Despite my objections, I rated The God of the Woods four stars for creativity and writing style. If you are a person who doesn’t care for epic family sagas with timelines that jump around consistently, this novel may not be a good fit for you.