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meadowbat 's review for:
Man in the Woods
by Scott Spencer
(If you count something that happens in chapter two a spoiler, then this review contains spoilers.) In chapter two, a free-spirited carpenter named Paul accidentally kills a man while trying to stop him from beating a dog. He panics, doesn’t call the cops and brings the dog home to his girlfriend Kate, the newly successful author of an Eat Pray Love-type memoir. To paraphrase the book, what happens next is the rest of their lives—a crisis of faith for Kate and a possible path to it for Paul. The novel asks (sometimes ham-fistedly) whether we live a chaotic universe or a divinely ordered one—and if it’s the former, is there still room for faith? As someone who believes in God, but not God’s so-called plan, the ideological question alone makes for something of a page turner. Not to mention the thriller plot that forms the book’s architecture, and my concern for that sweet dog. Spencer’s storytelling doesn’t always make sense to me—I’m not sure why we need to dip into as many POVs as we do—but on a gut level, I really loved this book. It’s a story of people (and dogs) lost and found and lost again, the way we all are.