There was once in the holiday camp. . . – Diepresse.com

Where challenges, games and fun are to be offered, two children disappear without a trace within 15 years. Liz Moore wrote a multi -layered, gripping novel.

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It is not a « terribly nice family » that meets the reader at Liz Moore, but rather only a terrible family: terribly rich and terribly inhumane. You don’t want to have these people about the enemy – but possibly not as friends. It’s about the Van Laar family and their two children, the tragic, much more: strangely enough both are lost. Son Peter IV, called Bear, disappeared without a trace in the summer of 1961; His body was never found. A supposed perpetrator was agreed, but died in the course of the interrogation of the consequences of a heart attack: the local Carl. Well, in August 1975, daughter Barbara is also desired. What is going on in this family, which has been resided in a property in a nature reserve for generations, in an original Swiss chalet that has been brought together by Switzerland to the USA and put together again?

Rebellion against the parents

A little below their property, the van Laars has been entertaining a summer camp for decades: Camp Emerson, the namesake is the (natural) philosopher and transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. This year, the twelve -year -old Barbara van Laar will also take part for the first time. This alone is unusual, because why should the child of the operator, who lives right next to the camp and thus in the reserve, want to be there? But the girl is unusual in itself. It does not seem to fit into this family at all, and that clearly shows: Barbara appears as a punk – at a time when many do not know anything about Punk – to rebel against their parents, and of course their dark presentation and rebellion do not like them at all. In the boarding school, it should be « troubled », which did not happen, so she will come to a much more strict institute in the next school year; She doesn’t know anything about the parental plans yet.

Liz Moore prefers to stab instead of spilling: on almost 600 pages, she tenses up with a network of people, events and time axles that you have to sort first. The period extends from the 1950s over the years 1961 and 1973 and the months of June, July, August and September 1975. In each chapter that she assigns to a person, this number beam occurs with a precise classification. Moore rolls up the events Achronologically and illuminates the different set pieces in different lengths.

Large staff

The most important people next to the Van Laar family are the camplitors TJ and Victor, who always live in the reserve, the supervisor Louise, the previously mentioned supposed perpetrator Carl and the criminal police officers Judy, Hayes and Larochelle. It is not only significant for the 1970s that the young woman with a first name, the colleagues are named.

Then there is the McLellan family with the van Laars privately and professionally, whose head is the lawyer of the van Laars and whose son in turn the alleged fiance of supervisor Louise. This was responsible for that group of girls, which included Barbara and her new girlfriend, Tracy. In addition, there is a well -known criminal, « The Schlitzer », actually: Jacob Sluiter, who recently fled out of custody and does not exactly contribute to relaxation of the situation. Sluiter has already been associated with the disappearance of Bear and now likes to haunt the nightly haunted stories of the holiday children-just like the spirit « Scary Mary », a gray-haired spook lady.

Moore also tells more about the parents of the disappeared van Laar children, especially about mother Alice: as an 18-year-old she married Peter III, who from then on constantly felt her shortcomings. When Bear was born, Alice seemed to have created her own place: at the side of her son.

Inner -family horror

It is a time piece in certain respects, the Liz Moore, born in 1983. It describes gender stereotypes without lifting her finger, but in a way that makes you listening and also for what is also warned today to take a closer look and listen to. Moore examines her women’s figures as well as the men on the edge of the (« better ») society, she is dedicated to them with particular attention. As if she wanted to ask where they have their place not only in history, but also in the world it portrayed. And then of course she also shows what the hardest currency in this world is: status, power and money. With none of this, however, you can buy integrity or humanity. In contrast, knocking down the weaker functions as a patent recipe.

« The God of the Forest » is a comprehensive, gripping book that offers more than thriller entertainment-it is a multi-layered social portrait. No wonder that the « King of Horror », the works of which always go far beyond the external bogus horror and rather refer to the inner (family) en real horror, on the book cover: « From the beginning it is difficult to put this long novel down. » From page 200-impossible.  » In addition to confirmation, there is nothing to add to these words Stephen Kings.