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birdykinsreads 's review for:
Fox
by Joyce Carol Oates
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Fox by Joyce Carol Oates
✅ purchased by me
Fox is about a charismatic middle school teacher who is also a predator and what happens when his body is discovered: When the truth of what he’s done is unearthed. It’s also mostly about the way these things are explained away, swept under the rug. And how people are only too ready to not see the darkness in front of them until it’s too late, and maybe not even then.
It’s hard to review a book this disturbing, and I’m not really sure why I keep doing this to myself—getting into the POV of pedophiles (see Tampa by Alissa Nutting as well).
I guess I was expecting that as prolific a writer as Joyce Carol Oates would approach the material with something new or would be able to transcend the darkness of it, but the mystery felt a bit cobbled together, the prose was long-winded and a bit overdone, and the telling of the story just felt too repetitive, it was so long and we spent so much of it just going in circles. While for the most part I was locked in, I wanted to see it ended satisfyingly, but I don’t think I got that. So, for me this felt a little disturbing for the sake of it… and that’s disappointing.
✅ purchased by me
Fox is about a charismatic middle school teacher who is also a predator and what happens when his body is discovered: When the truth of what he’s done is unearthed. It’s also mostly about the way these things are explained away, swept under the rug. And how people are only too ready to not see the darkness in front of them until it’s too late, and maybe not even then.
It’s hard to review a book this disturbing, and I’m not really sure why I keep doing this to myself—getting into the POV of pedophiles (see Tampa by Alissa Nutting as well).
I guess I was expecting that as prolific a writer as Joyce Carol Oates would approach the material with something new or would be able to transcend the darkness of it, but the mystery felt a bit cobbled together, the prose was long-winded and a bit overdone, and the telling of the story just felt too repetitive, it was so long and we spent so much of it just going in circles. While for the most part I was locked in, I wanted to see it ended satisfyingly, but I don’t think I got that. So, for me this felt a little disturbing for the sake of it… and that’s disappointing.