Finished the book last night and here's what I can't shake today:
The Title.
Can it really be that 'panic'—as in the Greek Pan, as cited—is the GOD here? Even metaphorically, my instinct rejects the idea that fear should hold divine power. Could it? Sure. But I can’t imagine the author titling this book as a stand-in for “Don’t Panic.” That feels too small for what’s at play here.
THE GOD of the Woods...
All the way through, I kept searching beyond the only named god. I found myself picking and choosing the powers of good as the stories wove themselves together.
In the end, maybe it’s Barbara. Or at least Barbara as a symbol. She transcends her timeline—this timeline—escaping a fate that could have bound her to her oppressors forever.
Or maybe it’s the locals. They’re near the top of my list of would-be gods, aligning with community as a modern godliness in my own life. Yet here, they are disempowered, stripped of their truths, taunted by them. One goes “mad” wandering the woods (Scary Mary), another carries a terrible secret in silence (T.J.). It’s not literal, but these are the themes of crucifixion. The crosses they bear—excruciating. Suffering, silence, transformation.
And then there’s Vic Hewitt—the innocent laying the innocent back into the earth. A burial, yes, but also an image that reads almost sacred. The way it’s described—the child held in grief, returned to the ground—felt deliberate, a shadow of The Pieta. The weeping, the loss. That moment lingered with me.
Maybe the god of the woods is truth. Or nature. Or an unseen force, as God often is.
This is why book discussions are so riveting: you brought up things I hadn't considered at all. And the interplay of spiritual motifs that you bring out is gorgeous and layered.
So I'll start out by saying that I assumed that Barbara was THE GOD of the woods. She is finally free of the ties that bind her. And she is free particularly because she did not panic but made the woods her friend, a force that fed her soul and built her strength. And then she used the power of the woods--a power that feels way beyond our own understanding, like many people's understanding of god--to free herself.
And I think you are spot on in your observation that, while there is goodness and a unity among the townspeople, they ultimately are still very much in the struggle. In fact, you could look at a person like TJ and say that she is, in fact, a christ figure. She sacrificed everything she had--her security on the Van Laar Preserve & at Camp Emerson--to redeem this forgotten and forsaken child. She is without a doubt Barbara's savior.
So, to answer your question, I didn't really chew on the title. But I'm SO glad you did.
What if the god of the woods is the soul freed from societal expectations (in the case of both Barbara and TJ) and living in a way that respects the power of nature (the woods)? What if it is a way of being that we all have access to?
After reading this beautiful novel, I wonder what people think about the use of multiple perspectives and time jumps… Did this help or harm our understanding of the characters? Did it escalate or obscure our sleuthing as readers?
I am a sucker for multiple perspectives. I always love how different people see the world and scenes differently. I do think they helped keep us open to all, even the despicable characters. Learning Alice’s history first helped me not shut down and shut her out when learning details of her treatment of her children: Bear at the end and Barbara for her entire life.
For me I did think the time jumps buried clues in a way that kept me in Moore’s clutches… only discovering when she was ready for me to. Which I don’t mind when the author is masterful in suspense as I felt Moore was in this novel.
My ADHD makes time jumps and multiple perspectives a little more tricky. It means I can’t read on autopilot. But I think, for this narrative, the technique was particularly useful. It provided a slow drip of info that I was constantly scrambling to put together.
I agree that multiple perspectives also gave me a greater understanding of characters that couldn’t speak for themselves (Bear), characters I loved at first blush but ended up being much more complicated than I’d anticipated (Delphine), and characters I immediately bristled against (Alice).
I’ve been mulling over how the artists and entertainers invited to the Black-fly Goodbye fit into this class and power struggle. At first, they all seemed blissfully lost in the glitz and debauchery they gained in exchange for basically being ornaments for the party. But I had to check myself once one of the entertainers helps Judy—there’s room for nuance with a clear(er) head.
My thoughts aren’t fully formed here, but my mind jumps to jesters and jazz musicians and bohemians, to modern influencers and content creators and pop stars. How there’s so much nepotism in industries like these, but there’s also folks from working class backgrounds trying to break barriers to entry. A weird liminal space in class struggles.
It is so easy to write off the beautiful ones... especially because Alice, Peter, and even Judy seem so willing to see them just baubles instead of people. But I loved the crack in the facade when one of the women is willing to not only say she saw JP stagger in bloodied and disoriented... but that she wished she'd never come to America at all. That all of this (and here I mean the "American Dream," the glitz of wealth, and the promise of this extravagant weekend) wasn't what it seemed at all.
There is an unseemliness and a cruelty to wealth the way that the Van Laars and the McLellan's experience it that robs people of their basic humanity. So much so that the setting and the players can trick the reader into forgetting that the entertainers are people at all. But there are. And, as you point out, these particular entertainers might very well be trying to carve out a space for themselves --and trying to break free of their own class constraints to do so.
Thanks for making this observation.
I'm reminded a lot of the LA wildfires in this discussion of liminal space for class struggles--where so many folks assumed only the wealthy had lost their homes in the fires. But many, many working class folks who work in the entertainment industry--and who live paycheck to paycheck like most of us--lost everything they'd worked for, too.
Finished the book last night and here's what I can't shake today:
The Title.
Can it really be that 'panic'—as in the Greek Pan, as cited—is the GOD here? Even metaphorically, my instinct rejects the idea that fear should hold divine power. Could it? Sure. But I can’t imagine the author titling this book as a stand-in for “Don’t Panic.” That feels too small for what’s at play here.
THE GOD of the Woods...
All the way through, I kept searching beyond the only named god. I found myself picking and choosing the powers of good as the stories wove themselves together.
In the end, maybe it’s Barbara. Or at least Barbara as a symbol. She transcends her timeline—this timeline—escaping a fate that could have bound her to her oppressors forever.
Or maybe it’s the locals. They’re near the top of my list of would-be gods, aligning with community as a modern godliness in my own life. Yet here, they are disempowered, stripped of their truths, taunted by them. One goes “mad” wandering the woods (Scary Mary), another carries a terrible secret in silence (T.J.). It’s not literal, but these are the themes of crucifixion. The crosses they bear—excruciating. Suffering, silence, transformation.
And then there’s Vic Hewitt—the innocent laying the innocent back into the earth. A burial, yes, but also an image that reads almost sacred. The way it’s described—the child held in grief, returned to the ground—felt deliberate, a shadow of The Pieta. The weeping, the loss. That moment lingered with me.
Maybe the god of the woods is truth. Or nature. Or an unseen force, as God often is.
Anyone else chewing on the title like this?
Aaaahhhhh. I love this train of thought so much.
This is why book discussions are so riveting: you brought up things I hadn't considered at all. And the interplay of spiritual motifs that you bring out is gorgeous and layered.
So I'll start out by saying that I assumed that Barbara was THE GOD of the woods. She is finally free of the ties that bind her. And she is free particularly because she did not panic but made the woods her friend, a force that fed her soul and built her strength. And then she used the power of the woods--a power that feels way beyond our own understanding, like many people's understanding of god--to free herself.
And I think you are spot on in your observation that, while there is goodness and a unity among the townspeople, they ultimately are still very much in the struggle. In fact, you could look at a person like TJ and say that she is, in fact, a christ figure. She sacrificed everything she had--her security on the Van Laar Preserve & at Camp Emerson--to redeem this forgotten and forsaken child. She is without a doubt Barbara's savior.
So, to answer your question, I didn't really chew on the title. But I'm SO glad you did.
What if the god of the woods is the soul freed from societal expectations (in the case of both Barbara and TJ) and living in a way that respects the power of nature (the woods)? What if it is a way of being that we all have access to?
After reading this beautiful novel, I wonder what people think about the use of multiple perspectives and time jumps… Did this help or harm our understanding of the characters? Did it escalate or obscure our sleuthing as readers?
I am a sucker for multiple perspectives. I always love how different people see the world and scenes differently. I do think they helped keep us open to all, even the despicable characters. Learning Alice’s history first helped me not shut down and shut her out when learning details of her treatment of her children: Bear at the end and Barbara for her entire life.
For me I did think the time jumps buried clues in a way that kept me in Moore’s clutches… only discovering when she was ready for me to. Which I don’t mind when the author is masterful in suspense as I felt Moore was in this novel.
My ADHD makes time jumps and multiple perspectives a little more tricky. It means I can’t read on autopilot. But I think, for this narrative, the technique was particularly useful. It provided a slow drip of info that I was constantly scrambling to put together.
I agree that multiple perspectives also gave me a greater understanding of characters that couldn’t speak for themselves (Bear), characters I loved at first blush but ended up being much more complicated than I’d anticipated (Delphine), and characters I immediately bristled against (Alice).
I’ve been mulling over how the artists and entertainers invited to the Black-fly Goodbye fit into this class and power struggle. At first, they all seemed blissfully lost in the glitz and debauchery they gained in exchange for basically being ornaments for the party. But I had to check myself once one of the entertainers helps Judy—there’s room for nuance with a clear(er) head.
My thoughts aren’t fully formed here, but my mind jumps to jesters and jazz musicians and bohemians, to modern influencers and content creators and pop stars. How there’s so much nepotism in industries like these, but there’s also folks from working class backgrounds trying to break barriers to entry. A weird liminal space in class struggles.
It is so easy to write off the beautiful ones... especially because Alice, Peter, and even Judy seem so willing to see them just baubles instead of people. But I loved the crack in the facade when one of the women is willing to not only say she saw JP stagger in bloodied and disoriented... but that she wished she'd never come to America at all. That all of this (and here I mean the "American Dream," the glitz of wealth, and the promise of this extravagant weekend) wasn't what it seemed at all.
There is an unseemliness and a cruelty to wealth the way that the Van Laars and the McLellan's experience it that robs people of their basic humanity. So much so that the setting and the players can trick the reader into forgetting that the entertainers are people at all. But there are. And, as you point out, these particular entertainers might very well be trying to carve out a space for themselves --and trying to break free of their own class constraints to do so.
Thanks for making this observation.
I'm reminded a lot of the LA wildfires in this discussion of liminal space for class struggles--where so many folks assumed only the wealthy had lost their homes in the fires. But many, many working class folks who work in the entertainment industry--and who live paycheck to paycheck like most of us--lost everything they'd worked for, too.