The God Of The Woods Is An Ambitious Tale Despite Its Deficiencies
Bea’s Books
I often find myself enthralled with books before I finish them. Once I do, and they’ve marinated in my head for a while, my full opinion unfurls. “The God of the Woods” by Liz Moore was one of those books. I devoured it within a week or so, yet while ruminating on how to frame it in this article, began to discern some of the book’s defective properties.
The first property lies in the manner Moore chose to tell the story, incorporating eight perspectives (varying in length and importance) to weave together two storylines and six time periods; a writer’s nightmare, yet Moore managed it with skill. Was it the right choice? No, but we’ll get to that later.
I liked to think of the two storylines like the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers, two rivers, one a clear deep blue and the other a murky brown, swirling together to make one. The Van Laars, a wealthy family living in the Adirondacks, are an uncommunicative family with a host of secrets and the owners of Camp Emerson, a summer camp located on their property and founded by the first Van Laar to settle in the Adirondacks (“Peter I”). Barbara, the daughter of Peter III, now head of the esteemed family, and Alice, his wife, hopes to attend Camp Emerson for the 1975 session. By mid August, Barbara is gone, mysteriously missing from her cabin. As the story progresses, Barbara’s true character and that of the Van Laars begins to shine through, as well as the interlocking narratives of employees of the Van Laars and residents of the small town nearby that find their lives changed by the particular Adirondack property. The coincidental disappearance of Barbara’s brother, Bear, over a decade earlier, is the string that wraps the time and perspective switches together, bringing the stories of two very different Van Laar children to a merging point like that of Minnesota’s rivers.
As you may have noticed, there is quite a bit to unpack in that description alone. I’ll begin with the aforementioned Defective Property Number One. The perspectives. Moore’s plot alone is riveting and filled with opportunities to add depth and intensity, but writing in eight perspectives minimized those opportunities (unless of course, Moore chose to lengthen the 476-page tale), leaving me frustrated that I never got to know some of the most fascinating characters better (namely Alice). Property Number Two: I simply do not see the chances of both Van Laar children going missing within approximately a decade of one another. Yes, I understand it is a fictional novel meant for entertainment purposes, but, quite plainly, it wasn’t believable to me.
Although this novel had its defective properties, it was an ambitious undertaking that Moore executed with excellent organization and a solid objective. I must applaud the level of coordination it took to intersplice chapters and perspectives, in spite of the fact that it bruised the novel in the end.
