In the Shadow of the Woods

Chasing Time on the Open Road

A brief interlude in your day. A coffee break together. For a moment. xoxox

The Menelaus blue morpho is iridescent when the light falls upon it just right.

“How long until we get there?” my youngest son yelled from the back seat of our van. We’re driving across Western Canada with the kids.

I replied with something about how life is a journey and we’re always already here, which had my two teenagers sniggering before they returned to their devices.

“Screenagers,” my youngest son said, seriously.

“Look at the mountains. We’ll be there, soon.”

The summer is starting to scramble and glitch—school supply shopping and fall scheduling pixelating the days. Momfluencers post Reels mourning how fast one of our precious eighteen summers we have with our children has gone. Post-it reminders that I still need to get four kids new shoes for their grown feet are occasional brown leaves dancing in the wind, ripped from the trees.

Earlier this summer:

I opened the first page of God of the Woods, described by The New York Times as:

At This Summer Camp, Ticks and Archery Aren’t the Biggest Dangers

In Liz Moore’s new novel, “The God of the Woods,” a pair of missing siblings spark a reckoning on the banks of an Adirondack lake.

The novel begins like this:

The bed is empty.

Louise, the counsellor—twenty-three, short-limbed, rasp voiced, jolly—stands barefoot on the warm rough plans of the cabin called Balsam and processes the absence of a body in the lower bunk by the door. Later on, the ten seconds that pass between sight and inference will serve to her as evidence that time is a human construct, that it can slow or accelerate in the presence of emotion, of chemicals in the blood.

The bed is empty.

The thematic question of the novel are set in these lines: Later on, the ten seconds that pass between sight and inference will serve to her as evidence that time is a human construct.

Structurally, the opening is a ripple, with the repeated The bed is empty. A ripple of what happened in these woods many years ago. Liz Moore uses the words blood and body, so we know what’s coming, but also the word absence, which indicates to us we’ll be looking for something all the way through this book.

And the setting and characterization—both so apparent and vivid in just these lines. When we come to a novel, we want to feel like we’re in the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing. Here, we’re with an author who is taking us on a a compelling meditation on the impact of time and tragedy. We’re already well looked after by ‘short-limbed, rasp-voiced, jolly.”

The book holds up to its promise. It has me in the Adirondacks, plunging into cold water, tall trees darkly holding their secrets.

Still.

Even as I finished it weeks ago.

Back in the van:

My son’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. He’s wearing contact lens, which make his eyes bigger and bluer—or perhaps he’s no longer squinting now he can see.

“But how loooooooooong, Mom. Like how many hours?”

“Maybe another two hours, bear. Look at that huge rock face. Look at the light upon it.”

Two hours. A thousand years. We’ve arrived already, we’re in the van forever, him in the backseat, watching me before turning back to his movie.

My summer started with a novel that asks if time is a human construct, then how do we live with its impact. What do we lose? What do we hold on to? Openings and endings.

Both.

Years ago, I walked in Panama's rainforest and saw a Menelaus blue morpho, a magical flower suspended in the silky afternoon light. I didn’t try to catch it, a butterfly and our whipping nets, instead I watched it flit and float until it was gone.

And here that butterfly is again, opening this piece for you, before leaving in the summer light.

Tell me, what have you read that lingers like The God of the Woods?

And how has your summer been?

xoxox

Alice

If you’re new here, my name is Alice Kuipers and I’m a writer, mother and dog-owner transplanted twenty years ago to the Canadian prairies from England. I’ve published fourteen books in 36 countries and my writing has been described as: “For storytellers and story lovers,” by Kirkus Reviews; ‘Gorgeous, heart-ripping, important,” by VOYA; and “Intense and wonderful” by Bif Naked. Join me for coffee breaks to look at lines from great writers. Xoxo

Read: Kala by Colin Walsh found me on a blanket on the beach this summer. I’m pulled in to the story of a missing teenager, and the people who loved her. And All The Colours of the Dark by Chris Whitaker is another excellent crime novel that reminded me what I’m trying to do with my own book.

Substack is full of to-reads for when the kids get back to school. I’m starting with

Amanda B. Hinton

and

Jeannine Ouellette

, both of whom are generous and brilliant. I have a lot to learn, always, as a writer, which is what I most love about writing my new book: the closer I get to finishing this draft, the more I see I can learn to make it stronger for you.

If you didn’t see this, enjoy!