“It came from the 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.”
“Something about her looks immortal…a spirit, an apparition, more god than child.”
Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods (Riverhead Books 2024) is in my top three reads for the year, possibly taking the top spot. We shall see. A literary thriller, the novel is a slow burn of a who dun it, full of questionable characters, questionable motives, and upended lives, all centered around the wealthy Van Laars, their booze-soaked parties and their wilderness summer camp and off-season endeavors that employ all the blue collars workers in the area.
In 1961, 8-year-old Bear Van Laar, heir to the family fortune, disappears without a trace. Fourteen years later, his 13-year-old sister, Barbara, vanishes from the family’s summer camp, into the same woods that had taken her brother. And so, a multilayered mystery unravels. What happened to Barbara? What happened to Bear?
It’s a novel of unfortunate wealth, misplaced loyalties, and attachment to the land. A novel of a much loved and adored child gone missing and his “replacement,” easily forgotten and discarded. A novel of secrets and lies, and the ties that bind. A novel of panic.
I’m not going to spoil the plot, because watching it slowly unfold is part of the magic. Some readers have complained it’s too slow, but each character is so distinctly developed, each time period so crucial to the final pages. I found it perfect.
And that cover. It may be the most perfect of covers of books I’ve read this year. That pink drip of paint holds the entirety of the novel, and it’s a brilliant choice.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 