Fox by Joyce Carol Oates is a chilling and emotionally intense novel that explores the fragile line between innocence and menace

Oates masterfully builds a sense of quiet dread through her lyrical yet razor-sharp prose capturing the confusion desire and fear that define adolescence The fox itself becomes a powerful symbol of both freedom and danger, about power manipulation and the blurred boundaries between predator and prey Fox is a deeply impactful read that will leave you breathless, in addition to disturbed.

I want to preface this review by stating that I have tentatively put it aside *for now* at roughly 60% but have every intention of picking it back up.

Also, CW: pedophilia, CSA

I include both CWs because through a decent portion of this novel we are actually in the POV of a pedophile and for other portions we are in the POV of an child who is being assaulted and I was not prepared for that. If you’re wanting to pick this up, make sure you are aware of the graphic nature of the POVs.

Since I got this as an eARC via NetGalley, I didn’t have CWs before going in so I was unprepared for the content to the extent that it is portrayed.

Don’t get me wrong, this novel is beautifully written and the prose are just stunning. The story is compelling and the mystery is intriguing and I have every intention of finishing this novel.

Francis Fox is a middle school teacher and a predator and we learn of his death via POV characters who we get to know throughout the novel. Each character has their own secrets, their own motives, and we follow each one as a mystery is unraveled surrounding the death of Fox.

I give this 4 stars even though I have yet to finish it, when I’m more mentally prepared I’m sure I’ll be able to finish it and truly appreciate the work. I already do, I just can’t push myself to read more.

This book was an emotional roller coaster. I’ve loved Joyce Carol Oates for years and this book brought the same beautiful prose and intricate characters I’ve come to expect from her.

The subject matter made this one really hard to read. Several times I had to put it down and come back to it. It is not for the faint of heart. Pedophilia and sexual abuse are very explicitly detailed in the first half of the book.

JCO said this was her first “whodunnit” mystery and I think she knocked out out of the park!

4.5 ⭐️s.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for an advanced copy of this book. It is scheduled to be published on June 17, 2025.

Justification can be found for almost any behavior, an admission of guilt and wrongdoing surfacing in disclosure and punishment, sometimes momentarily, sometimes never. Fox, dead when we first meet him, held on to his sense of justification until his end. English teacher at a private middle school, highly popular with students and well regarded by faculty and parents, his desire for tween girls surpassed a secret wistfulness, a lusting of the heart and the male gaze, to manifest in acts of sexual abuse. But the girls were willing, treated tenderly by him, his literary hero, Edgar Allen Poe, married his thirteen year old cousin, and the arrangement of old men and young girls in the novella, House of the Sleeping Beauties by Yasunari Kawabata was one of his inspirations. He did have his moral standard, aesthetics isn't everything, he was disgusted by Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. He died a good man, a good teacher.

The local police detective, exposed to some Buddhist teachings, influenced by them, won’t let the case of the accidental death of the popular teacher rest. Joyce Carol Oates creates a background of characters and actions made knowable to the reader, the background the detective must travel to reach revelations and decisions.

Slow in sections and at points repetitive, Oates in the classroom, getting the information to her students, or Oates nodding back across the decades at Faulkner. I can’t name another living author better wedded to American literature and its themes than Joyce Carol Oates. Her subject matter, as always, reflects the stories of disturbing events we find in our news media. She is our literary treasure. In a long list of published novels, Fox is one of her best.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, Random House, for an ARC.

painful novel. we see through the eyes (at least for part of it) of one of the most vile characters ever put to pen. and the book just gets darker and darker. but yet, Oates's writing propels you through the work, turning what could have been an excruciating slog into a brutal but engaging read. 5 stars. tysm for the arc.

4

setting: new jersey
Rep: n/a

I've never read anything by Joyce Carol Oates before so I was taken by surprise by the style - it's quite jarring, especially the first chapter, during which I almost gave up. I persevered and did end up getting invested in the story, though it's pretty dark and disturbing - I didn't need to spend quite so much time in the thoughts of a paedophile. The book is longer than necessary at 640 pages and it is very repetitive, and the style remains almost clunky and an effort to read, but I enjoyed the way all of the threads of characters slowly came together, even if I didn't actually like any of the characters.

Joyce Carol Oates is a favorite author of mine. I this novel, she tackles grooming of middle school stude ts by thise they trust. We-written, intricately plotted. A dark but enjoyable read.

Oates is an all time favorite author of mine, and she has a way of writing that is so unique and interesting that you right away know it's her work, no matter what subject or storyline she has chosen to write about this time.
She can also write in many different genre types.
This is one that tackles SA and how it effects not only the victim, but those around them. Lives are changed.
If anyone can tackle a subject such as this, and write an engaging story about it, it's Oates.

I am so sorry, but I could not finish this book. I understand the author is famous, but this was just too disjointed to manage. I am not posting a review online.

⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

Pre-Read Notes

I grabbed this because I've enjoyed Oates's writing in the past. I liked We Were the Mulvaneys, a wonderfully sad family epic, and Black Water, a short experimental novel that plays with the power of a narrative voice and its impact on the outcome of a story, my favorite from her. Joyce Carol Oates's books are normally quite long because, I think, she takes so long to open up a story. And she's definitely taking her time here!

"Miranda Myles lingering puppylike in the corridor outside Mr. Farrell’s office stricken and staring toward his door. Worse, seated on the floor with knees drawn to her chest, patiently waiting to see him. Farrell was embarrassed by her presence. Yet gratified, that such a pretty girl should appear to be— well, infatuated with him. Didn’t want anyone to notice . Yet, wanted them to notice. Wanted them to envy him. Yet, not to blame him." p123

The generosity of women! Farrell is continually astonished. He is blessed. A man can be a pure unabashed bastard yet there’s a woman who will forgive him. Hell, women will forgive you before they even know what they’re forgiving. p131

Final Review to come

(thoughts & recs)

Joyce Carol Oates is brilliant every time but I don't always love her work. She tends to wrestle with very difficult subject matter from unexplored perspectives. In We Were the Mulvaneys, for instance, she explores how the SA of a teen girl affects each member of her family and the whole unit. This book does a similar thing-- it is the perspective that makes it brilliant.

That said, I sort of feel like this is the latest book in a pile of them about teachers grooming their middle grade students and doing irreparable harm to them. These books describe the crimes against the children to the point of salaciousness. I don't really understand this trend in fiction right now and I honestly feel that authors taking advantage of it are cashing in on something icky. But typical Oates, there might be redemption in her treatment of the elements. She brings us in close to a terrible man and shows us the dirt under his fingernails, and that's a perspective with social value. Also, she shows the aftermath of such relationships in the victims as adults, another valuable perspective. Do these redeem the use of such a terrible crime? We'll see. Edit to come.

*edit Listen, this is a dark, challenging book. In the end, I thought the book was worth how uncomfortable I became a few times while I read. Will you agree? Maybe. Will you think it's icky? Definitely maybe. But it's undeniable how gifted Oates is at walking the reader all the way around the issue. And I loved the ending. It might feel anticlimactic, but I think that has an important purpose that I *can't share* because it's a spoiler! Anyway...give it a chance, but first check my content warnings below.

This book is so, so hard to read, but it is also so good. I recommend this to fans of experimental form in fiction, true crime style fiction, and literary suspense books, but please be aware that this book contains very dark material. It's sort of where Oates has always shined.

My 3 Favorite Things:

✔️ The opening scene is gripping and sort of lets off on a cliff hanger, well placed, which drew me in strongly enough to carry my interest through the hundred or so pages of setup that follows.

✔️ Princess Di, a small high-energy terrier rescue dog, is my favorite character. I think Oates's treatment of this character's perspective, written into her owner's scenes, is quite well done. The dog's "voice" easily distinguishes itself from her human's voice.

✔️ I love fish-out-of-water stories and this main character, P. Cady, curmudgeonly and socially awkward, is in for a good one.

Notes:

1. Content warnings: child SA, pedophilia, grooming, forced eating, drugging with food, anorexia, murder, decomposition, violence to animals, animal death, carion, guns, car accidents, police, child trauma and PTSD.

2. If I had to give this one a genre, I'd call it literary dark domestic suspense.

Thank you to the author Joyce Carol Oates, publishers Hogarth, and NetGalley for an accessible digital arc of FOX. All views are mine.

“Fox” by Joyce Carol Oates is a shocking and distressing novel about an engaging English teacher in an elite boarding school in New Jersey. No one knows much about his background and when his car is found half submerged in a pond and body parts are found nearby, the community begin to ask disturbing questions about who he really is. The very disturbing topics of sexual abuse, victim vs predator and the moral questions around crime and complicity fill every page.
The book is beautifully written as are all the previous books by this author, but I found it too long and repetitively slow. I also think that the graphic details will have many tuning out which makes me sad because it could have shined a light on a topic that society “must” find a way to deal with.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group - Random House | Hogarth for my arc in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

I've read a lot of Joyce Carol Oates' short stories and was excited to see her new novel for request. I have not read any of her novels since I mostly read her in my undergrad courses. And I really enjoy her short stories. So I thought, "Oh yeah, I bet I'm gonna love this novel!" Unfortunately, I was wrong.

Her writing remains strong and incredibly unsettling, but something about this novel just didn't really hit the mark for me. It is in Oates' own words, her first whodunnit novel and to some extent, I can see the mystery and the "WHO DID IT?" but the actual reading experience was pretty bland and I don't know, not right? I didn't really care about any of the characters, I didn't care as much about the mystery as I thought I would, and I just felt like I was slogging through constant descriptions and meandering thoughts that went nowhere, and ultimately didn't serve any narrative purpose. The writing itself again, strong and unsettling, really lacked that, and I hate to use this term, IT factor, that I typically associate with her writing. The novel just felt rushed and in desperate need of multiple rounds of editing and different readers.

This was my first Oates novel and I'm disappointed.

This felt very bloated early on, causing me to stop around 15%. I see a lot of reviews of people who enjoyed it, and perhaps there is an audience for those people who study literature. For me, it was not written in a way that was compelling enough for me to want to pick it up again. It felt too long and too slow for something to be read purely for enjoyment.

Note: ARC provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This psychological thriller is perfect for readers who like a dark, deeply atmospheric read. This was my first JCO, and I didn’t quite know what I was getting myself into, and it was a bit too dark for me. For sensitive readers, check content warnings before taking this one on. But if you are accustomed to darker reads, then this novel’s unsettling tension and commanding prose will likely satisfy all you could want in a novel. If you’ve not read this author before, I would compare the writing to Stephen King (with a slant more towards realism and less towards the paranormal/fantastical). But the horror is there all the same, only it’s the horror of the darkest secrets people keep.

I read a Joyce Carol Oates interview in which she says this is her first whodunnit. I couldn’t resist that, though 672 pages is hardly your typical whodunnit. Let me be upfront about one thing. I keep hearing that the book’s content is horrific, but with nothing to indicate in what way. So I’m going to put in a spoiler next so that you’ll know, if you want to, before you commit to the read. <spoiler>Fox is a middle school teacher and a pedophile. There are repeated descriptions of his physical acts with prepubescent girls, as well as of his twisted thoughts. There is also some pretty graphic description of a murdered corpse.</spoiler>

It took me a long time to decide whether I wanted to finish this book; over half the book, really. In addition to the troubling subject matter, there is just so much repetition in the book. Arguably, the repetition has a purpose: to pull the reader further into the cloistered/claustrophobic world of the Academy and the contrasting rural town it’s set (apart) in. But I think a writer as talented as Oates could have achieved the same atmosphere without all the repetition. Around the two-thirds point, I felt the story settled in better and became more narratively taut.

While there is certainly a whodunnit in this story, it felt to me more like a character study. Not just how Fox’s mind worked, but how the poison of his actions spread like a viral infection. Some become very ill, others less so, but in so many cases the aftermath of the infection is a life changed forever. That’s the aspect of the book that most affected me.

What a book! A combination of gruesome horror story and intricate police procedural, the book presents us with a memorable cast of characters. There is the repellent psychopathic narcissist, Fox (a name he chose in order to hide earlier misdeeds), who thinks he is invulnerable, and who makes his way in the world as a middle-school English teacher. There are the fatherless pre-teen girls in his classes whom he singles-out as his prey. The author depicts their inner worlds that attract--and make them vulnerable to--the evil narcissist. We then witness in voyeuristic detail his horrific treatment of these defenseless young girls. (You really do not want to meet “Mr. Tongue” and “Mr. Teddy Bear,” or have a daughter who can be taken for a “Little Kitten.”)

The book also features a panoply of needy adults (all of them white), drawn from every level of socioeconomic status and educational background, and all of them having serious problems with intimacy. Thankfully a few of these adults also are admirable in their own way. In particular, the of course grizzled detective who wants to solve the mystery at the heart of the story; and a lonely young man who can barely interact even with the few people he trusts, but who turns out to be capable of self-sacrifice and heroism when a situation demands it.

Along the way the author offers an implied critique of private school education, socioeconomic barriers that prevent people from fulfilling their potential; fundamentalist religion; and the polluted sickening environment certain segments of our society are forced to inhabit.

We are also given a veiled critique of a few famous literary works and authors. These include the author who can be said to have invented the horror/detective story, and the author of a notorious novel that is now considered a classic but, when it was first published in the 1950s, was almost banned from distribution because of its seeming celebration of a deeply ingrained social taboo. (In a way Fox questions and even rebukes the critical acclaim of this earlier work.)

The writing in Fox is mostly unadorned except for the author’s flair in constructing similes. There also are a few virtuoso passages, for instance the dazzling opening pages, and the section much later in the book in which the author takes us inside the mind of that lonely young man as he makes a crucial and dangerous decision.

The book is long. I am not sure it needed to be that long. Still, the challenging length of the book is justified—at least for me--by the author’s deep understanding of many shades of human psychology and the wonderful similes that ornament the narrative. Of the latter I feel compelled to provide a small sampling: “A book is like a little door. I can open the door and climb through and nobody can follow me.” “As rudely decisive as a grating pulled down over a window.” “. . . has burrowed into an innocent man’s life like an infected tick.” “…paralysis of being like a soul at the precipice of Hell.” “…his forehead oozes sweat like the tears of a mollusk.” “. . . unsuspecting girl-students entrapped in Fox’s website. Like beautiful iridescent-winged moths entrapped in a spider’s web.” (This last one slyly alludes to an obsession of the author of that 1950s “classic.”)

I cannot say where this book fits in the Joyce Carol Oates canon. I have read only one other book of hers, a novel published 40 years ago. She has published dozens and dozens of novels since then, none of which I have read. I am sure that by not reading any of them (!), I have denied myself many incomparable reading experiences. But at least I have given myself this one.

Thank you Random House Publishing Group for providing an advance copy in galley form for review consideration via NetGalley. Please note: Quotes taken from a galley may change in the final version.

When a handsome, youngish man named Francis Harlan Fox applied and auditioned for a job in a well-regarded prep school in a small town outside Atlantic City, the headmistress was bowled over. Despite her plans to hire someone other than another white male and her reasons for having misgivings about him, he charmed impressed, and astonished her with his charisma and knowledge. And they had so much in common, too. Headmistress P. Cady felt as though the two of them had a real connection, and could even be friends.

Unfortunately, Francis Fox is not the man anyone thinks he is. This is a dark story, a literary novel that is also a mystery, told in an irresistible nonlinear way. The reader's close attention is rewarded with pieces of information told in flashback and from narrators who differ in reliability.

Francis Fox has taught in different schools before, never staying long in the same place. This was a red flag, but Fox was ready with his answers. Why has he moved around? Because he has had inappropriate relationships with junior high girls. He is a pedophile. How is it possible that he is still employed? How is it that he has charmed and conned his way not only into a new life and a new job, but also as a highly esteemed, popular teacher? At first, while reading this novel, I was sceptical that this was likely. Unfortunately, though, it has happened all too many times. Intelligent people are fooled, believe what they want to believe, and sometimes mentally revise history to make themselves more comfortable. Also, Fox had a very good lawyer.

This story is a scary psychological thriller with a couple of interesting twists. Detective Horace Zwender is a wonderfully drawn character who uses his own logic and philosophy to bring this case to an interesting end.

Fox, by Joyce Carol Oates, has a riveting plot and makes an important statement, and I am glad that I had this chance to read it. Many thanks to Random House and Netgalley for providing me with this opportunity.

There’s no denying Joyce Carol Oates’ writing is powerful, unsettling, and unforgettable but this book was a deeply difficult read for me. Its relentless darkness and graphic repetition left me feeling more disturbed than enlightened, as if simply witnessing the abuse on the page was itself a transgression. I searched for clarity amid the chaos: was the message about absent fathers, inattentive mothers, class disparity, hypersexualized youth, or the erosion of spiritual anchors? Oates presents a wide lens on trauma without offering resolution, leaving the reader to sift through the wreckage. And yet, perhaps that’s the point to confront us with the discomfort we’d rather ignore and spark the conversations we need to have.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC which I read in exchange for this honest review.

The Story of a Dog? Where Is the Fox?
Joyce Carol Oates, Fox: A Novel (New York: Hogarth: Random House, June 17, 2025). Hardcover: $32. 672pp, 6X9”. ISBN: 978-0-593978-08-5.
**
“Who is Francis Fox? A charming English teacher new to the idyllic Langhorne Academy, Fox beguiles many of his students, their parents, and his colleagues at the elite boarding school, while leaving others wondering where he came from and why his biography is so enigmatic. When two brothers discover Fox’s car half-submerged in a pond in a local nature preserve and parts of an unidentified body strewn about the nearby woods, the entire community, including Detective Horace Zwender and his deputy, begins to ask disturbing questions about Francis Fox and who he might really be. A… galloping tale of crime and complicity, revenge and restitution, victim vs. predator, Joyce Carol Oates’s Fox illuminates the darkest corners of the human psyche while asking profound moral questions about justice and the response evil demands. A character as magnetically diabolical as Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley and Vladimir Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert, Francis Fox enchants and manipulates nearly everyone around him, until at last he meets someone he can’t outfox. Written” with “interweaving multiple points of view…”
I chose this book for review because Joyce Carol Oates’ name sounded familiar. It reminded me of a canonical literary author, but I think I was thinking of somebody else. Oates’ novels have been finalists for the Pulitzer, but she has not won it. But she has won other awards, especially for Them (novel about connections between three American-dreaming characters seeking marriage and money). She spent most of her life teaching at Princeton before recently transferring to Rutgers. Apparently, she succeeded in academia because of the success of her novels without finishing her PhD at Rice that she started some time after 1961. Though she published her first book, short-story collection By the North Gate in 1963, or two years after finishing her MA. So, she was not yet a “full-time writer” when she quit her PhD program. A few stories in this collection had previously appeared between 1959-62. But the collection did not do especially well. And Oates did not sell her first novel until 1964. I do not know why I recall her name, but I think I heard it a few times during my literary studies. So, it is important to review what Oates has been up to recently.
The cover is very well designed. I especially like the simplified and yet three-dimensional-suggesting artistry in the trees. I have seen similar simple-fuzzy tree designs on other covers recently. I tried imitating this style, and it turned out to be more difficult than I imagined to make them realistic yet simple in this manner. The cover also employes the torn-cover design: it looks like a cover was printed, torn and then overlayed over a front page with a simplifying drawing technique. The specks of red ink are a delicate touch. It is just an attractive design overall.
The contents list promises this will be a literary novel by the originality of the chapter titles: “Mystery-Journal”, “Good-Luck Piece”, or “Wet-Whiskered Kiss”. This high standard is also set by quotes from classics in the frontmatter.
This expectation is contradicted by the “Prologue” that is written in a juvenile style, starting with: “There was never a time when I was not in love with Mr. Fox.” This seems to be intended to interest readers by starting to explain what the title is about, and by appealing to their emotions. But the rest of the prologue babbles about this love, with only a mention of their “secret” as a new point raised.
The first chapter, “The Trophy: Wieland Pond: 29 October 2013” begins with a dull attempt to raise suspense: “It will be no ordinary morning.” The term “ordinary” deflates the promise, as it merely promises the events will be slightly better than totally dull. General or stock descriptions of “rain” and the “sky” follow. Then, a truck drives into grotesque water. Then, a bit of excitement: a barking dog is displayed as it jumps out of the truck. There is a dull conversation with this dog, where the owner attempts to convince the dog not to “run wild”. Since the leash is “released”, I assume the owner should be a bit more confident the dog is not going to run away, or do something “wild”. Then, a description of the daily urine and poop (mention of the rhyming “loop”) walks between this human and dog. A bunch of birds appear. This description could not be any more boring… Or could it? The next section finally introduces something happening outside what is extremely mundane: there is a “splash” in the water. Readers are asked to guess what might be splashing. Then, the dog wanders off following a smell. While these relatively short paragraphs are at least easy to read, then a page-long paragraph follows from the dog’s perspective: “a carrion-cloak in which to wrap herself, myriad drunken smells swarming into her brain, overcharged as an electric socket…” Why would the dog be overcharged by many smells? A dog can process the different smells without being overwhelmed: this is why dogs are used to find stuff. If dogs got overwhelmed from different smells, they would just stand there in deep confusion. And then there’s pondering about “her doggy soul”, where she is certain, “She is not a rebel.” There’s loyalty expressed to her human as a “savior” after she was tossed by a highway. From the dog’s perspective, it would not remember what happened when it was a baby. And it probably does not care it has been “saved”.
What is happening? Why is this happening? Why is this author using personification to assign biologically unnatural ideas to this dog? Why is the psychology focusing on a dog, instead of exploring the murder promised at the center of this plot? The author seems to have been carried away by an unrelated plotline in a digressive series of random thoughts. This probably means this novel is unreadable unless it is assigned-reading in a class or the like. There are moments that are kind of interesting, but then platitudes, generalizations, or repeating phrases fill most of the story with hot-air. I do not recommend attempting to read this book. It’s just generally pretty bad. Maybe if the intro was from the perspective of a fox, it would have made sense.
Pennsylvania Literary Journal: Spring 2025 issue: https://anaphoraliterary.com/journals/plj/plj-excerpts/book-reviews-spring-2025

Painfully long and repetitive and for what??? I’d recommend watching literally any episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit instead.