Fox is one of those books that’s difficult to recommend—not because it isn’t well-written (it absolutely is), but because the experience of reading it is intentionally uncomfortable. It’s long, layered, and deeply disturbing. At times I wasn’t sure I could keep going. But I did. And I’m still thinking about it.

Told through multiple perspectives across shifting timelines, the novel gradually reveals the scope and impact of a teacher’s predatory behavior. What begins as disjointed and disorienting eventually forms a chilling mosaic of complicity, silence, and survival. Joyce Carol Oates doesn’t just depict depravity—she dissects it. She shows how easily a predator like Frank Farrell (now rebranded as Francis Fox) can slip between cracks, reinvent himself, and continue harming those most vulnerable, all while charming or evading those who might have stopped him.

The characters are distinct and unsettlingly real. Oates excels at making each voice feel unique, grounded in its own trauma, denial, or complicity. The result is a story that feels less like a plot and more like a psychological echo chamber—claustrophobic, but purposeful.

That said, this is not a book for everyone. It includes graphic depictions of grooming, sexual abuse, and the long tail of trauma. At times, the weight of it all felt like too much—even as I appreciated the precision of the storytelling. I felt the length (25 hours audio / 600+ pages), but I was also compelled to see it through, and I found the ending both fitting and quietly powerful.

Ultimately, Fox isn’t trying to be easy. It’s trying to be true. And it succeeds—but with a cost. Four stars for craft, complexity, and impact. But with a major content warning and deep reader discretion advised.

For decades, Joyce Carol Oates has been one of our brightest shining literary lights, providing readers with an array of brilliant books in a variety of genres. Fox is not her first mystery. In addition to the mysteries embedded in many of her novels and short stories, From 1987 to the mid-1990’s, Oates wrote conventional mysteries under the pseudonym Rosamund Smith. Except in a superficial way, Fox is not a conventional mystery. The mystery centers on the death of Francis Fox, failed (for plagiarism) PhD-student turned middle school English teacher at a pretentious private school in southern New Jersey, Fox uses indifferently uses people for his own advantage. Wealthy and/or lonely people are used to advance his career, which is disrupted when he is discovered to be using some of his young female students to sate his perverse sexual pleasures. After his body, ravaged by vultures and other creatures when left in his car at the bottom of a ravine, is identified, only Zwendler, the investigating detective, seems interested in finding out what really happened. Fox abounds with gorgeous prose and many illusions to art and literature, especially Nabakov’s Lolita, Poe, Kierkegaard, and many others. Now in her 80s, Oates is at the top of her literary prowess. Her prolific output astounds. Fox will appeal to a wide array of readers. Highly recommended,

Joyce Carol Oates has published more than 70 novels, but “Fox” is described as her “first whodunit.” Francis Fox was a middle school English teacher at an elite private school — until his body was discovered in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, surrounded by ominous vultures. As the mystery of his death unfolds, so does the mystery of his life, revealing disturbing secrets. Oates interweaves multiple perspectives to tell a chilling, dark tale.

Upfront warning: this book is about a pedophilic teacher! JCO doesn't pull her punches! It WILL make you uncomfortable, and honestly, props to her for that. We get a story of Francis Fox, a pedophilic teacher who cuts a swath across women and children alike in private boarding schools, and his eventual murder and the investigation around it. We get deep delves into all of our characters psyches, and frankly, some of those are truly horrific and will make you want to flense to cleanse. How all of this comes together is frankly amazing to watch unfold, and is definitely worth your time this summer.

During the summer months there isn’t much I love more than immersing myself in a thick, literary suspense novel. Joyce Carol Oates, newest release, Fox, which is part dark academia, part police procedural, and full-on, small-town horror, fit the bill for me. The fact that it was actually cold, rainy and dreary while I tackled this 672-page tome, only added to the sinister vibe that permeated this book.

Fox is dark academia at its finest, but please be forewarned, this story carries the “ICK” factor to the max. Pedophilia is never easy to read about, and that is the case even with the best written books. However, I knew I would be in good hands with Joyce Carol Oates. In Fox, JCO expertly weaves a complexly-layered story that shows us exactly how a predator hides in plain sight. It is JCO’s precise mastery of dark storytelling, that had me entranced with not only the elite, prestigious, private middle school, the small town in New Jersey in which it sits, and the characters encompassed within its confines; but also with the predator himself.

The story begins when a truly horrifying discovery is made in a nature preserve well-known to locals of this small community. JCO, in telling, Fox, from multiple perspectives, creates a literary horror story that gets under your skin and which is not easily washed off by soap and water. As gruesome as some of the descriptions were, I could not put this book down. If there was a way to prop my eyes open, I would have stayed up all night, every night, until I turned the final page.

As much as the reading experience was top-notch for me, I did feel it was unnecessarily long. Due to the page-turning nature of this book, it didn’t feel long, but there was some repetition in the retelling from the different perspectives, which could have been a bit more finely tuned in the editing process. Other than that, Fox, along with its characters, setting and plot will be a story I won't quickly forget.

Readers who love literary books of suspense, horror and mystery, and don’t shy away from dark, disturbing topics, will likely find themselves, as I did, burning the midnight oil. For this reader, Joyce Carol Oates, has written yet another masterpiece. I already can’t wait to see what she writes next.

4.5 Stars rounded up to 5 Stars

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group – Random House – Hogarth for an ARC of Fox by Joyce Carol Oates in exchange for my honest review.

An utter sickening pleasure. I was thrilled by this novel from the first pages right up until the audacious epilogue. Impressive, unnerving, and beautiful.

When I saw this book by Joyce Carol Oates, I recalled reading her well written and provocative and prolific stories in my teen years and thought this looked promising. Of course, if you follow my reviews you know I always judge a book by its cover and never read the synopsis - though the synopsis would not have prepared me for this. I also did not recall that JCO is well known for tackling dark and disturbing themes… this book was dark and disturbing, yet so well executed.

In truth I had moments where I felt emotionally I may need to DNF, but ultimately I am glad I did not. Trigger warnings - this book not only addresses pedophilia, but also has sections that are written from the perspective of the perpetrator. These sections were deeply troubling to read.

Ultimately JCO writes (as written in the synopsis): “A hypnotic, galloping tale of crime and complicity, revenge and restitution, victim vs. predator… [that] illuminates the darkest corners of the human psyche while asking profound moral questions about justice and the response evil demands”. I find myself still thinking about the ending… in one regard perfect, justice is served and the innocent protected; but in several others justice is lacking and the spiral of Stockholm Syndrome and selective perception persists.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Joyce Carol Oates's Mr Francis Harley Fox nee Frank Farrell teaches English class to privileged private school students at a rural New Jersey middle school. He also dominates, brain washes, harasses, and sexually abuses a select few of them until he dies.

Before his body is found, his boss, Langhorne Academy headmistress P Cady was walking her spoiled dog along the trail around Wieland Pond when suddenly Princess Di found a bloody organ of his, and loses her ever-loving mind over it. This scene is revisited and expanded upon several times, each time better than the last. I love the incredible level of detail Oates lavishes upon each of her characters, Fox's victims and their families.

Homely 13-yr old Eunice Pfenning yells at her estranged daddy Martin on the same trails, victims of a failed marriage, and the whims of Mr Fox. 12-yr old Genevieve "Little Kitten" Chambers is Fox's main prey. Over-developed 8th grade scholarship winner Mary Ann Healy's family is rooted in Wieland, NJ history, and integral to the story of Fox.

I didn't understand who were Fox's "Several aborted fetuses dispersed among several young women"?!? Nor who Detective Zwender was rumored to have killed years ago. I also didn't understand how eyes can be pebble-colored, zinc, agate, flat-metallic, or flat-zinc. But none of that detracted from Fox for me in the least.

Thank you, NetGalley, for the opportunity to read this story. All opinions are my own.

This is not a book for all readers. I did struggle with the prose quite a lot. This was the author's first dip into whodunit territory. Once I found a quiet spot without interruptions, I could follow the intricate tapestry of the pacing. Take your time to read it, you will be rewarded for doing that.

Thank you, Joyce, for constantly changing the style of your novels. Keeps us readers on our toes!

This was a slow, dark, and at times very difficult literary thriller. Joyce Carol Oates certainly pulled no punches in examining a topic that is challenging to stomach reading about, but she did it in a compelling and thoughtful way. I did need to take breaks reading this, but I’m glad I saw it through. I can easily see this being made into a mini-series; it has some of the same eerie slow-burn elements that shows like The Sinner and True Detective are beloved for, and as far as books go I would compare its vibe to Long Bright River. I’m glad I got an ARC of this!

Fox is, in many ways, exactly what you'd expect from Joyce Carol Oates: provocative, disturbing, morally ambiguous. For me, this callback to Lolita was less about art and more about endurance testing. Getting through this one was a slog.

The story centers on Francis Fox, a middle school teacher with an obsession with prepubescent girls. And yes, it's every bit as uncomfortable as it sounds. I wouldn't exactly call Oates' depiction of sexual abuse graphic, but it's close. She gives us way more than enough detail to create a vomit-inducing mental picture. Fox's obsession with his victims, as well as the grooming and psychological abuse he inflicts on them, are laid out in enough detail to be suffocating. It's relentless and sickening.

That could be the point, of course -- the sickening nature of the subject matter. No matter how literary the framing, the story is no doubt meant to be both horrifying and fascinating. For me, it was just exhausting. If I hadn't gotten a eARC of this one in exchange for a review, there's no way I would have finished it.

I kept reading partly because I'd heard there was a twist at the end that made the whole thing worth it. It did not. The twist landed with a dull thud, and did not justify the grotesque journey I'd just been subjected to.

I read a lot of Joyce Carol Oates in the process of earning an English Literature degree, so her writing style and quirks aren't new to me. But good lord, this one contains some annoying tics. Oates seems to have developed an aversion to pronouns. The headmistress of the school, whose name is Paige, is referred to as "P. Cady" over and over and over and OVER AND OVER. Not "she" or "Paige." Almost always "P. Cady." I felt like I was in a bad sequel to Finding Nemo -- "P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney." The squirmy nickname Fox has for his victims, "Little Kitten," was so grating and cringe I almost put the book down just for that. And don't get me started on his references to Mr. Tongue <shudder>. If Oates was trying to get under my skin, I guess it worked, but not in a way that left me impressed.

I'm sure some people will say this book is a raw look at monstrousness, or a subversion of the predator/victim narrative, or some other English-major-sounding stuff. But for me it seems like less a daring work of fiction and more a deeply unpleasant one that mistakes discomfort for depth.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this book.

FOX
by Joyce Carol Oates

Ms Oates is from Lockport, a town a few miles from my home. It's always fun to see what the local, prolific author has crafted. She's in her late 80s and still churning them out.
Oates has written all genres and has a very distinct, often challenging style, but her stories are consistently dark and psychological.

This brick is no different.
It is creepy, disturbing, and often highly uncomfortable. We are dealing with a teacher, a charmer, a groomer-- a pedophile.
There's a major ick factor to this one.
You'll need breaks. It falls somewhere between her books Zombie and Butcher in terms of content.
The story slowly climbs under your skin making for a very uncomfortable reading experience. There's a realism here that will turn your stomach. It is a very long book considering the unpleasant subject matter.

It utilizes different timelines, perspectives and sources to allow an unfolding three dimensional story, while exploring power-- its abuses and consequences upon a community.

Being Oates, I was expecting the drama, the exclamation marks, and endless parantheticals. (They are all here!)
I was pleased to also get a psychological, insightful, demanding work that is more character study than whodunnit.
Once you get beyond the opening, you'll slowly be pulled into a dark world of victims and predators.

Be warned this is DARK literary fiction-- realistic,  upsetting, graphically detailed-- a tense story that will keep readers too curious not to continue.

For fans of Highsmith and Nabokov.

Definitely be aware of content/trigger warnings.

Thanks to Hogarth and NetGalley for an eARC of Fox by Joyce Carol Oates, which I absolutely loved and was spellbound by until the final page. The greatest strength of the novel was the quality of the character work as it shifted viewpoints throughout its course. The novel starts with a murder and works backwards, slowly unraveling what happened to the titular Mr. Fox. I highly recommend Fox; if you love mysteries and/or thrillers, you will be left stunned, especially by the finale.

Fox makes it evident that Joyce Carol Oates is extremely skilled at crafting a story - there were many connected perspectives leading to a reveal made decent sense. But I was miserable reading this. Which maybe is the point? Though, I'm not entirely sure. Oates had readers spend a lot of time with Mr. Fox, who molest his pre-pubescent students. It was unsettling to be in his head.

You know the writing is excellent when reading actually makes your skin crawl and gasp in disgust. Joyce Carol Oates is one of my favorite authors, partly because she IS NOT AFRAID TO GO THERE! Her latest novel "Fox" is a dark and heavy tale of child sexual abuse and death, with many chapters told from the twisted viewpoint of the abuser himself. I literally felt dirty reading this book and had to put it aside several times because I just couldn't spend one more second inside the mind of a pedophile, a credit to the author's talent in spinning a realistic tale. Obviously influenced by Lolita, this is the story of a monster who preys on the innocent, a monster whom a reader gets to know intimately. "Fox" is a challenging read, a slow burn, but it is gripping and will take a reader on a rollercoaster of emotions. Oates' is a master at building tension, that boil over into a very satisfying, if not completely unsurprising, conclusion. This lengthy book is definitely more about the ride than the final destination. It will continue to haunt me, that's for sure.

Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this incredible book. Five stars!

First Oates and I loved the experience! What a great (also, very disturbing!) story.

I took my time reading this one, because I did not want to miss any details. Even though I kind of figured out who killed Fox early on, the story becomes so twisted that I started to feel that any of the characters could've done it.

Highly recommend this one and I can't wait to read more Oates!

𝚃𝚘 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚍𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚘𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚜 𝚝𝚘 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞- 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚒𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚗𝚐𝚎 𝚘𝚏 𝚊𝚗𝚢 𝚑𝚞𝚖𝚊𝚗 𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚛.
𝚃𝚘 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚍𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚘𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚜 𝚝𝚘 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚜𝚘 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚋𝚕𝚘𝚌𝚔𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚒𝚛 𝚒𝚗𝚌𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚘 𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎-𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚛𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞: 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚒𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚗𝚐𝚎.

Who is Francis Fox? Certainly not who he pretends to be. Joyce Carol Oates has created a man who is insidiously manipulative, exactly the sort of predator that knows how to groom victims and fool those in charge of protecting them. He cultivates trust with women, even those who have hardened their hearts against him are not immune to his charms, once he has set his sights on winning them over, they become his champions. He uses these good women as a shield, women who would swear he is an upstanding citizen, a caring, passionate teacher, no way would they suspect him of the evil that lives in his mind and the lude acts he commits. He speaks to what women want to hear while his vile thoughts riot inside of his mind. It’s so easy, people want to believe the best of the man they adore. He knows what it takes to be seen as a safe adult, trustworthy, to surround himself with upstanding women, of a certain class. He has a checklist of sorts for who he needs to be, educated, handsome, gallant, and in a relationship, a clever way to hide. But when Mr. Fox’s car is found submerged in a retention pond at the nature reserve with body parts “strewn about the nearby woods”, the very people who love and trust him are shocked to learn he is missing and that he has betrayed their trust. Detective Horace Zwender and his deputy begin to uncover what has happened, probing the people in Mr. Fox’s life and soon discover the prestigious school may have been under the spell of a sick monster.

There is one person who isn’t so fooled by Mr. Fox, the young man with eyes of an “old soul”, Demetrius Healy. A stand-up guy who had to grow up fast by caring for his sick mother and now, his aging father. He is a kind, young man who is the dependable one despite having an older brother, Marcus, who leaves it all on his shoulders. Where Mr. Fox is skilled at understanding girls and women, Demetrius is inexperienced, shy, and kept apart. The two couldn’t be any more different. It is Demetrius who first discovers the grisly accident scene while he and his brother are working, and Marcus who protects his fragile brother from the trauma by reporting it to the police.

The students at the school caught in Mr. Fox’s web are his kittens, prepubescent girls (for nothing disgusts him more than the curves and fleshy bits of a full-grown woman’s body) plucked for their specialness. These prize picks are always attractive, malleable, and fatherless. Certainly nothing like the awkward, plump, Mary Ann, the local scholarship student. If not his passion, she has gained his curiosity by being unimpressed by him, a challenge indeed. He invites her to his office after school for a game he has been playing with others before her, a secret. And what do young girls love better than their secrets? Mary Ann’s relationship with her own father is beginning to suffer, the separation between her parents, the collapse of her emotional state and the accusations placed on her father as Mr. Fox becomes important to her is a clever part of the novel, realistic.

It is a tale that will turn your stomach, and yet leave you needing to know what happened, where is Mr. Fox, what occurred in the past that drove this English teacher to Langhorne Academy. Where evil lurks, take heart, because so can angels.

Brutal and shocking, Joyce Carol Oates pins her characters under a microscope with the skill few authors have. Mr. Fox filled me with rage, for all the victims that exist in real life and the masks such monsters wear. The fact that it is fiction is no comfort, because this could be ripped out of a true crime story.

Published June 17, 2025

Random House

I’ve read several of Joyce Carol Oates short stories and really enjoyed them, so I was excited to check out her latest novel. Wowza, this book was challenging to read! I struggled for multiple reasons, including its length and its content. (NOTE: Definitely check out the trigger warnings if you are a more sensitive reader) There are some sections that could have benefited from a bit more editing and others that could’ve been removed without any effect on the story. I will admit I got tired of the same phrases and information coming at me multiple times. Ultimately though, the writing is strangely compelling, and the characters (for better or worse) will be taking up residence in my head for a while.

This is a book about those things we don’t want to think about, the people who live and hide among us - predator and prey, abusers and victims and witnesses, haves and have nots, and the never-ending circles of devastation that happen when we look the other way. Seeing the actions and their effects, internal and external, from numerous perspectives is what makes this book work, and what causes it to, ever slowly, get under your skin.

Please note: I received a digital copy from NetGalley & Random House Publishing Group - Hogarth in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are strictly my own.

Have you ever wished that Patricia Highsmith wrote Lolita?

Maybe that's a bit flip. After all, Patricia Highsmith wrote just over 20 novels over a span of 40 years; Joyce Carol Oates has written something like triple that number, over a span of 60 years and counting. Oates is a pretty distinctive literary figure in her own right. Perhaps it would be more apt to ask: Have you ever wished that Joyce Carol Oates wrote Lolita?

This book starts off feeling like it's going to be a kind of murder mystery, involving the death of a charismatic middle school English teacher (the titular Mr. Francis Fox) whom the reader rapidly learns was a serial child predator - plenty of plausible reasons for different people to want this guy dead, right? But it becomes clear before too long that Oates is not especially concerned with the procedural "whodunit" of it all, not least because the book spends a gigantic chunk in the middle in a flashback narrative from Fox's perspective, detailing not only how he came to be at this school but the complicated psychological nuts-and-bolts of his particular sexual predilections and predatory history.

Oates never lets the reader fall into the Humbert Humbert trap, where Nabokov makes HH so charismatic and charming as a narrator that the undiscerning reader either glosses over his monstrousness or believes him to be presented approvingly. For one thing, the close-third-person narration keeps a little bit of a buffer between Fox and the reader; for another, Oates keeps the portrayal of Fox a lot rougher-edged, always keeping the unpleasantness of his character near the foreground (hence my Highsmith comparison earlier). This has pros and cons: on the one hand, it avoids the problems of Lolita being misinterpreted as a hero-narrative about child sexual abuse; on the other hand, if you're going to have a problem sitting inside the head of a horrible monster, however skillfully drawn, it's a hard thing to spend that much time with Fox. And it is a LONG time: nearly 700 pages is a hell of a lot for a book like this.

But if you can hang with the unpleasantness, I think it's a rewarding read, and surely could provide a lot of discussion fodder from how it is in clear conversation with Lolita. On two levels, even: Fox has a lot of peculiarly strong opinions about Lolita which he will share almost compulsively, some in a "methinks he doth protest too much" way but some seeming to be genuinely held, if from a cracked point of view, while on a meta-narrative level Oates includes a side character named Clarence Quilty for reasons that never were entirely clear to me but I bet some English grad student will have some theories.

I do think I land on around 3.5 stars, rounding up. It's just a little too long for what it is, and Oates seems mostly unconcerned with the "mystery" part of the murder, floating the narrative around other members of the community and taking a long time to get to the point. In theory this lets her show something about how Fox's crimes and death (and the slow, incomplete revelations of said crimes to certain characters) affect the people around him, which would be admirable if it was used to foreground the victims in particular to counterweight the time spent luxuriating in the head of a pedophile, but it never quite hits that mark and still could have used a sharper editorial scalpel to trim those storylines down too.

Believe it or not, this is my first book I've read from JCO. I know, I know! But now that I've read it, I'm absolutely hooked. Her writing is like music, it's a melody that I can't get out of my head.