It’s a quiet, early morning in a summer camp in the Adirondack mountains, 1975, when teenager Barbara van Laar is discovered missing from her bunk. The alarm is raised quickly, but there is no sign of Barbara. As the search progresses, skeletons come out of the closet and worlds collide. Barbara is the daughter of the wealthy Van Laar family, owners of the camp and the surrounding land. The Van Laars are remarkably eager to steer the investigation and they don’t seem particularly interested in helping the police; as some of them remark, it is eerily similar to a situation some twenty years earlier, when Barbara’s younger brother Bear went missing. Bear was never found.
It can be hard to find well-written thrillers that are nevertheless a lot of fun to read, and from what I’d heard, The God of the Woods ticked those boxes, so I was quite eager to read it. It didn’t grab me as much as I had hoped, but it was still a very good book.
One of the things that irks me is when authors paint teenagers – girls in particular, but boys too – as senile, exclusively driven by hormones and simplistic. Moore steers clear of that path. Yes, obviously, they’re teenagers, hormones are going to be involved in the decision-making process, but there’s more to the characters than that. Barbara, unloved by her parents and unwilling to fit into the path set out for her, is inventive, smart and strong. Her friend Tracy feels seen by her and looks up to her; under Barbara’s tutelage, her self-esteem grows. The boys, too, are never just empty husks of libido and plot device, though they feature less in the story.
Other characters, like camp counsellor Louise or detective Judy, are likeable, engaging and mostly realistic. I liked that Judy – the first detective on the squad – has to deal with sexism but it is never the main point; it’s simply an obstacle she has to circumvent. The bigger issue in the novel is the fact that the Van Laars, and families they’re friends with, behave like assholes. Money buys a lot of things, it seems, and the Van Laars literally look down from their house on top of the hill. The house is named Self-Reliance, which is a tad ironic for people who get others to do their dirty work for them.
I won’t go as far as call this novel realistic – it isn’t, particularly the conclusion is a bit of a reach – but it’s both frustrating and satisfying to see the family pay to get their way, but it doesn’t make them any happier as they sling themselves into the adirondack chairs on their lawn, sipping their drinks and looking down at anyone who isn’t in their old money inner circle. Alice, Barbara’s mother, is desperately unhappy: a pill-popping alcoholic, numbed by medication and years of living with an unloving husband and snickering staff. It’s hard to sympathise with her, or the rest of the clan as they struggle to uphold the self-created myth of a powerful, self-made family.
‘Van Laar’ is a Dutch name, meaning the family’s roots lie in the town of Laar. As it happens, Laar is just a mile or two from where I live. It made me laugh; Laar is a sleepy, sedate town where everyone knows everyone. Originally, it was little more than a farming enclave, though these days house prices are pretty steep; it’s been sucked up by a larger, nearby city, but they still offer large, free standing houses with sizeable yards and remodelled farm houses. It has a primary school in a brand-new building, and the main church is surrounded by water and leafy trees. There’s a natural playground where everything is made of wood and flax rope. It’s quite lovely in that way that signals understated wealth. I doubt Moore has ever been to that town – and why would she; there’s nothing of interest, really – but in a way it’s a perfect metaphor for the family: a close-knit community that can’t, or won’t, hold on to its humble origins, creating a myth for itself. Funny how that works out.
