I’ve always been a fan of Joyce Carol Oates, and usually I fly through her books—but Fox was a tougher read for me. The pacing felt slower, and I found myself having to really push to get through it. That said, Oates’ writing is always thoughtful and layered, and I can see how this story will resonate with other readers.
It just wasn’t the right fit for me personally, but I’m still looking forward to picking up more of her work in the future.

Oates is a master storyteller, and this is a crackling whodunnit, while also being a too close look in the head of vile predator. Fox is a mix of Humbert Humbert and Tom Ripley a silver tounged con man who doesn't want money, but access to young girls. There are parts of this book that make you want to take a shower but part of its power is how Oates makes you stare right into the abyss.

<i>Wanting to hug Ms. Hood but standing very still. As if tears might spill from her eyes if she moved. The brightly lit library was her refuge, she hated to leave it and return to the rest of her life, in the classroom and in her home, unpredictable to her as a rowboat lurching and swerving along a swollen creek.</i>

By the time the car is found in a ravine near a local nature preserve, the body has been largely dismembered by wildlife, but the car belonged to Francis Fox, the new middle school English teacher at the prestigious private school located in the southern end of New Jersey, a place where the financially struggling local people watch as expensive houses are built in gated subdivisions. As the story goes over Fox's history, both at the school and previously, it's clear that a number of people would have a problem with Fox and one that would most conveniently be solved by his death. But as Detective Zwender looks into the death, most of the people around him would be happier to dismiss it as an accident and his own determination to find out what happened might just destroy him.

Joyce Carol Oates writes about crimes with an eye for the uncomfortable and she's written a lot about girls and young women preyed on by men, so this novel falls in a sweet spot for her, exploring not only how a man might prey on girls, but also how those girls might eagerly participate in their own destruction. She takes her time with this story, giving us the lives of several of the girls in his classes, of the people he interacted with from the head of the school and the librarian he halfheartedly courted to a janitor at the school, adding along the way various parents and people who knew Fox along the way. She's drawing a picture and taking her time. It's effective, and it's a tribute to JCO that she can spend a good hundred pages hinting at the dead man without revealing him.

There are many mentions of Nabokov's Lolita along the way, including a character named Quilty, and while the descriptions of Fox's behavior are not graphic, they are viscerally disturbing, so be aware going in that the subject matter can be hard going.

DNF. Despite the stellar blurbs, I couldn't push through this one. Oates clearly knows her craft—the prose is polished and the boarding school atmosphere appropriately sinister—but something about the execution left me cold.
Francis Fox as a character feels more constructed than lived-in, despite comparisons to Ripley and Humbert Humbert. Those antiheroes had psychological complexity that made their monstrosity compelling; Fox felt like a collection of "mysterious teacher" tropes rather than a fully realized predator. The multiple POV structure, while ambitious, fragments any momentum the mystery might have built.
The pacing drags considerably, with Oates indulging in lengthy psychological exposition that stops the narrative dead. For a book marketed as "galloping," it moves at a glacial pace. The boarding school setting, while atmospheric, never transcends familiar territory.
Perhaps this rewards patient readers who stick with Oates's deliberate style, but I found myself reaching for other books instead. Sometimes even accomplished writers and promising premises don't click.

Fox is not a novel you will finish in one sitting. I have read almost all of Joyce Carol Oates novels and this is one of the most disturbing. The manin character Fox is a teacher who turns out to be someone we don't expect him to be. There is a detective who tries to find out how his car got into an accident and caused his death. You go back and forth and see the man Francis Fox and the horrible things he did to children. In a world where child trafficking is rampant and politicians using pedophile in every other sentence this remarkable novel shows us how a community can be unaware of what is happening to it when you let someone in who you are suposoed to trust and instead use their own power to manipulate children in the most horrific way. This is literary fiction at its best. Oates is 83 years old and create something like this tryly shows the talent she is and that age doesn't matter. Highly recommended. Thanks to Hogarth Press for the read.

DNF at 10%

I want to start by saying that even though I DNF-ed this book, I have the utmost respect for Joyce Carol Oates as an author. This was not my first book by Oates, and I don't anticipate it will be my last, either. She is a phenomenally talented author, and the few chapters that I did read were certainly captivating.

I *rarely* DNF a book, particularly if the book in question is an advanced copy, but I did not realize that Fox would contain such graphic descriptions of pedophilia, grooming, and the sexual assault of a child. Ultimately, I found the content to be too difficult for me to get through, though again I acknowledge that Joyce Carol Oates' capabilities as a writer were not at fault. If anything, her writing was too viscerally real, and thus left me horrified.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hogarth for my advanced copy.

Here is an author definitely keeps her style. Well written but slightly creepy book that really gave me the heebie-jeebies. very well written. Although this author has never written a book that isn’t.!

While it is by no means an easy read, Joyce Carol Oates' Fox is an absorbing murder mystery and an unsparing portrait of evil.

An Acura is found half-submerged in the wetlands of southern New Jersey; inside is the animal-eaten corpse of Francis Fox, an English teacher at Langhorne Academy, an elite boarding school in the fictional township of Wieland. Fox was handsome, charismatic, and nurturing towards (some of) his students; he was also a manipulative pedophile, plying his favorite pupils with drug-laced treats and molesting them in his office. As his death sends shockwaves through the community, Fox haunts every single character, from the detective investigating his murder to the headmistress who unknowingly hired a sexual predator—to say nothing of his victims.

Fox hops from perspective to perspective, allowing us to get to know a broad ensemble as the narrative jumps back and forth through time. There's pharmaceutical executive Martin Pfenning and his autistic daughter Eunice, with whom he has a strained relationship; there are the Healys, a dysfunctional "poor white" family who struggle to make a living in a rapidly gentrifying Wieland; there's Paige Cady, Langhorne's headmistress, whose icy, WASPish demeanor belies a writhing mass of neuroses.

And, of course, there is Fox himself, one of the most odious characters you're likely to meet for a very long time. A cross between Humbert Humbert and Tom Ripley, Fox is a well-educated con artist who idealizes the young female form—he's fixated on the prepubescent nudes of the French painter Balthus, as well as Edgar Allan Poe's marriage to his thirteen-year-old cousin Virginia Clemm (see Beyond the Book). When he's with his victims, he refers to himself sometimes as Big Teddy Bear, and other times as Mr. Tongue.

What makes Fox's passages illuminating rather than gratuitously ugly is how clearly Oates sees him as the pathetic wretch he is. When we watch Fox connive his way into the tony confines of Langhorne Academy, we receive no vicarious, Ripley-esque pleasure from the process—only frustration and disgust at the naivete of people who should know better. His inner monologue alternates between maudlin self-pity ("my heart is in tatters, my life is in ruins"), delusional infatuation (like his endless cooing over his "little kittens"), and sneering cruelty, directed especially at young Eunice Pfenning. He relishes how he can manipulate his students by granting or withholding praise and good grades, describing himself as a "puppet-master"—as though we're supposed to be impressed by how skillfully he can emotionally abuse a bunch of twelve-year-olds.

It should come as no surprise that Oates, the author of novels like Blonde and Zombie, goes to some very dark places here. There are passages describing Fox's abuse, both from his point of view and that of his favorite victim, which will paralyze you with hatred and despair. And his evil, dangerous behavior is not limited to sexual abuse: his treatment of Mary Ann Healy, a troubled girl whom Fox nurtures then spurns, and Eunice Pfenning, whom Fox goes out of his way to torment, is just as upsetting.

Fox will not be a book for everyone. Oates has many virtues as a writer—her gothic sensibility, her gift for evocative imagery, her fearlessness to go where others won't dare—but restraint is not among them. (For the most part, anyway—the fates of at least a few characters are left hauntingly unresolved.) Even those who can stomach the subject matter may find Fox exhausting. But if you're on Oates' wavelength, you will be richly rewarded with a dense, twisty mystery that is unafraid to gaze into the void.

Since I DNFed this after two chapters, I can only comment on what I experienced before giving up. Francis Fox is a charismatic English teacher at an elite boarding school whose car is found submerged in a pond with body parts nearby, leading to questions about his true identity and dark secrets. Despite Oates' undeniable command of language and literary prowess, there's something about her long-form prose style that I find insufferable - she becomes excessively verbose in a way that feels like a terrible slog rather than artful crafting. I love a beautiful turn of phrase and well-crafted sentence, but Oates pushes beyond that into smugly pretentious territory that tests my patience. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" is probably one of the most effectively unsettling things I've ever read, which proves she can be brilliant when constrained by shorter forms - but her novels feel indulgent and meandering in comparison. I know a lot of folks think she's a brilliant genius so I feel like a lowly worm even having an opinion about it, but sometimes literary titans just don't work for you personally.

I began reading Joyce Carol Oates years ago and I am always impressed by her ability to create a narrative that is gripping. She is often experimental with her writing, rather than following a proven formula. This book is literary but also a murder mystery. The novel begins through the inner thoughts of a dog. This dog is living its best life as he is off leash and exploring a local trail and pond. He gets the scent of something that awakens his inner instincts and he returns to his owner with a “gift”. The story then explores the world of Francis Fox, private school English teacher, who has a track record for forming deep connections with women and having to cover up the connections he forms with young girls. There are certainly times in this story that it is hard not to look away, although in actuality there is little truly graphic content, it is enough to perceive the actual events. The latter part of the book is the police investigation into the events from the first half of the novel.
I would say that this was a difficult read due to the content, but expertly handled by the author. This novel has multiple characters who we hear from throughout the story. The character development was outstanding. The writing was gorgeous prose that interwove references to other literary works. I have come to find that I really love JCO’s work, especially when she has tackled challenging subjects and given the topics space to develop in a longer work. This book will stay with me for some time to come.

#Fox #NetGalley #RandomHousePublishingGroup/Random House/Hogarth

I unfortunately DNF’d at 20% due to excessive on page child sexual assault, which is unfortunate because I was enjoying the mystery and the prose. While the book was not for me, I think that it is great and will definitely find its audience.

If you are an Oates fan, then say less and pick this up. If you are "Oates-naive" but enjoy dark academia, literary thrillers, mysteries and darker topics, then this should be something to read. I found myself reading this slowly over a month, not because of the size of it, but because of the subject matter. Oates tackles pedophilia, grooming, sexual abuse, self harming behaviors such as cutting and mutilation, as well as violence. This is not for the light hearted reader who wants something quick to digest. I work in this field, so therefore this brought up several examples in my own memory and experiences that forced me to slow down and work through this. The failure of those who should be protecting children is showcased at several different points in the story, which proved to make this an infuriating read but so well done and executed by Oates. The system meant to protect them was more interested and motivated to protect their reputations and social status, which is not surprising or shocking at all.

Thanks to NetGalley, Random House and Hogarth Publishing for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I am not the right reader for this book. The writing itself is lovely, if a bit flowery. My preference for summer books tends not to lean toward overly complex plots or meandering sentence structure. It was simply too much for my summer mode brain to embrace.

I plan to revisit this one at a later date when I’m ready for a slowly developing plot and complicated storylines.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy. All opinions are my own.

This book explores dark themes. I wouldn't recommend this to everyone but those who want to read something that will make you think about the impacts of trauma from different perspectives, this is a book for those people.

Thanks to NetGalley for access to a copy for review.

I'm going to start with saying this is very clearly not for me.

This is probably spoiler filled but I don't care.

Over the past few years I have mostly been comfort reading with a splash of suspense and very occasional horror. And I generally only enjoy books where I actively like the POV characters. Here one of the main POV characters is a pedophile. I nearly DNF'ed at about the 1/3 point, but pretty mmuch wanted to make sure he got what was coming to him.

Obviously, this is beautifully written. Just not something I should have read.

I read the first chapter and it was the most wordy thing I've ever seen.... It was pages and pages of introspection in a dog's head and I was like, get to the point. I don't think this one will be for me.

87-year-old Oates’ newest venture is one of the most compelling, provocative, and unsettling books I’ve read all year—it’s also not one I can recommend widely du to the subject matter. The novel open with the discovery of a body in a crashed car at the bottom of a ravine. We soon come to suspect—and, truthfully, hope—that the body belongs to one Francis Fox, a pedophile middle school teacher at the prestigious nearby Langhorn Academy. The first half of the book mostly explores Fox’s backstory. He is a despicable sociopath so being in his mind vacillates between uncomfortable to stomach-churning, but through his perspective, Oates is able to spotlight how a predator can maneuver within a system, using people’s own biases and blindspots against them. In this way, the book is a disturbing picture of complicity and the way the manners and morays of elite circles allow plenty of room for both abuse and coverup. Looming over the book and picking up steam in the second half is the investigation into the discovery of the car crash and the body, and Oates is incredibly skilled at crafting pacing and suspense while allowing the story plenty of room to explore a myriad of themes. Because although this book is primarily about human depravity and the complicity that surrounds it, Oates also seamlessly works in questions about class, gentrification, education, justice, and gender. There’s so much to take away from this book, but what I appreciated the most was the way Oates examined power in educational systems and the long-reaching legacy of celebrating male writers who abused young girls. Oates is undoubtedly a genius and this will be one of the best books I read all you, but you do have to be in the right headspace if you’re going to pick it up. Additionally, the audio of the book is fantastic (a huge that’s to PRH Audio for my copy!), but note that it’s harder to skim the disturbing sections on audio.

As always, Joyce Carol Oates’ writing is exceptional. Grabs you and pulls you in. I enjoyed the way she set up the structure of the mystery - all the threads coming together in a weird twisted way. All that said, it was difficult to be ‘in the brain’ of Mr. Fox for such a long period of time. The fact that it was so hard really speaks to Oates’ skills, but at a certain point it did really start to get to me.

This was my first JCO but it certainly will not be my last. I knew this would be a difficult read and I wasn't sure how I would feel about it. But I got pulled in and ended up devouring this book.

Fox is set at a private boarding school and its surrounding small town in New Jersey. An enigmatic new English teacher, Francis Fox, joins the school at the start of the school year, but quickly tragedy strikes the community. After his disappearance, the members of the school community reckon with what has happened in the few short months he was among them. Though the book starts shortly after the discovery of Fox's car in a local nature preserve but then shifts back in time to the beginning of the school year. JCO has us follow several different characters: the headmistress of the school, some of the young girls, a girl's father, some of the local people in the town, and, of course, Fox himself.

This book is by no means an easy read. It is going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. There were several parts, primarily in Fox's sections, where I had to put the book down and walk away. Without going too much into the details, Fox is abusing some of the young girls at the school and this is not his first time doing so. When you're with Fox's character, JCO is not shy about sharing the difficult details. But I think she also handles his character really well. He's an awful person (clearly) but also complex and she brings that across well without making him sympathetic. It's a delicate balance.

Similarly, several of her other characters are complex, not always the greatest people. This makes them feel real and well-rounded and just interesting. If you don't like morally gray characters, you will probably not like this book. But I found this to be an interesting character study with a hint of a literary thriller. JCO carefully traces what is right and wrong and where there are certain gray areas between the two.

There's a lot more I could say about this book but I don't want to reveal too much of the story either. Lots of trigger warnings here, so as I've said, this book might not be for everyone. But I couldn't look away from the story.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House | Hogarth for gifting me a digital ARC of the latest offering by Joyce Carol Oates. All opinions expressed in this review are my own - 5 stars!

Francis Fox is a charming English teacher at the private Langhorne Academy. boarding school. His students love him as do their parents and his colleagues. But when two brothers discover Fox's car half-submerged in a pond, the entire community begins to ask questions.

Oh my goodness. This book will gut you. But it's masterful in its execution, as to be expected from Joyce Carol Oates. It's dark, disturbing, frightening in its evil reality. What I loved most was how this story was told from the viewpoint of so many people in Fox's orbit, from a janitor, a child, even a dog! Your mind will wrap around all these people and the tentacles that can result from one person's actions. There are many suspects that I questioned along the way. It's a long, immersive book and I started reading the digital copy when my audiobook hold came in from the library. And I never went back to the digital. The audiobook is done with a cast and it was perfection. It truly brought these characters to life. Do not miss this one.