Fox

4.25

The most horrific non-horror novel I’ve ever read. It’s impossible to discuss Fox without mentioning Lolita or My Dark Vanessa. Oates seems determined to go even further, and she does. She plunges disturbingly deep into the minds of predator and victim alike. Even the bystanders get psychological depth, which sometimes makes the book feel overlong, but the writing is so sharp it’s hard to complain.

Fox is unsettling, intimate, and painfully human. You finish it feeling complicit, like you’ve witnessed something you were never meant to see. It would be hard to deny that Fox is as brilliant as it is haunting.