This book is a quick and interesting read. One night in the woods, fourteen-year-old Sophie is brutally attacked by more than one man. She may not have seen the attackers well, or at all, but in any case, she can’t remember. Her boyfriend, Crow, is charged with the crime. Readers know he is innocent but for the first half of the book, most of the suspense is built on the question whether Crow will be convicted. In the second half of the book much of the suspense arises from uncertainty about who the guilty attackers might be, whether they can be convicted and the awful consequences to Sophie if they are charged and defend themselves. Will Sophie remember? More importantly, will she be able to heal? Meantime, parents and other teenagers have their own problems. Cox has plenty of sympathy for the difficulties of both the teenagers and the parents who must worry about them. Almost all the main characters except for a couple of men who seem genuinely devoted to the well-being of teenagers in trouble, are guilty of some kind of transgressions, or think they are. So eventually the question of forgiveness arises, over and over with different characters, and then the question of the forgiver’s own unintended complicity in the wrong or her failure to deal with it adequately. Cox often displays actions and incidents beautifully, especially those of the teenagers. There are a number of teen-aged boys, but Cox manages to delineate most of them well, so Bobby stands out from Lester, and Crow is different from his brother and from Tom, even though they are friends doing similar things. So the writing often captures you and there is plenty going on– damage, attempted healing, betrayal, attempted justice. And forgiveness. Who can you forgive? Who must you forgive? And what things, if any, are unforgivable?Maybe its as much confession as observation about the book: in spite of big themes and much suspense, I seldom felt close to the characters– a confession if it is I who kept a distance, an observation if it is Cox who held me at arms’ length. I’m not sure which it is. Cox writes beautifully and in a well-structured story. Yet, little stylistic things, I think, conspired with whatever my limitations were to hold me at a certain distance. Not that any one of them mattered to my response but these things added up. Here are fairly representative examples, mostly in summary form:t– Sometimes Cox’ comments about the internal life of her characters seems not to grow organically out of immediate experience of the characters but to be launched from outside them, as comments by the author. t– A certain amount of the story is delivered in narrative summary, not in a scene where the characters are seen doing or thinking or feeling. “[H:]e had poured his love and care, his attention onto his students—” That’s the summary without a scene. Here’s the author’s comment: “. . .a benefit for those who grew up in South Pittsburg.” (p. 52 of my paperback edition).t– Cox doesn’t seem to have much patience with physical details of anything–details I suspect I needed to feel close, to envision characters in their physical beings, in their actions that reveal them. “[N:]ow, in bed, she felt the burden of the day.” In this statement about Helen, she has no connection to any physical detail – bed, yes, but not sheets, not softness, or lumpiness or anything that she might actually physically feel or observe, just the abstraction: the burden of the day. (p. 21). In the same paragraph, we learn she’d always loved the morning, she’d come alive at sunrise, feeling possibilities. But Cox doesn’t present her looking at the sunlight, the shadows, the window frame, anything physical. No one has a face, a physical face. t– Cox seems to be sometimes there on the page, ready to point you in the right direction–a real interruption of any feeling I might have been developing for the character, especially when she loads her narrative with romantic terms. “Her heart struggled against the idea that Crow might be guilty....” Surely that intrusion was unnecessary. It’s merely the author’s annotation to what we experience more directly in the rest of the paragraph. “She prayed hard. . . . demanding that God let this go.” t– Relationships are clearly important in this book and in a way its about relationships, but none of the relationships seem intense in themselves or to generate lasting intensity. Bobby is frustrated when Sophie won’t accept his attentions, but this passes quickly. Fair enough; teenage frustration is like that, but that just means it doesn’t grab your interest, the Or take Sophie and her mother. They have a good relationship, but the mother’s intensity about the assault on her daughter doesn’t appear in a scene; we hear about that from others. And her conflict with Sophia, a tiny secret exposed, quickly disappears.t– Cox seems to be half sociologist and half fiction writer. She’s in the head of everyone and knows their innermost thoughts, but what she tells us sometimes is collectivized, not about individuals. “[T:]he girls weren’t sure if they wanted to like her.” (p. 116 of my edition). Maybe that would be less noticeable if we saw Sophie’s response to the girls’ attitude, but we don’t even learn whether she caught it. There is a nice lyrical passage describing a group of boys diving and rising up in the river like dolphins, then the switch to describing thoughts attributed to the entire group: “They didn’t want to think about the price it took to be men, wanting instead to be the blaze, the rage, the danger they thought were men.” (p. 172) I admired the insight and the writing, but it wasn’t really about these individual boys but about boys as a category, some of whom happened to be playing dolphin-like. It was more of an outsider’s intellectual observation than a sense of how the boys felt, even as a group. I’m not worse off for having read this book or this passage; I’m just not able to get close the characters on a sustained basis through such observations. t– Along with grouping of characters, Cox offers some generalizations about people in general that seemed to push you away from feeling for individuals. We love for weakness or strength...for security or wildness, for money, or beauty or sometimes for sadness. Whatever the reason, the brain turned giddy with self-worth, and self-worth became indelibly link to the one who was loved.Certainly these thoughts tell us something about the character, Aurelia, who’s been unforgiving of her former husband, but they are presented in a philosophical form, and it doesn’t tell us how Aurelia actually feels, much less about the interactions Robert and she shared. That’s not the whole story of this quotation. The next paragraph goes on:Then when that person does something outrageous, do we still love him? Do we move away, kill off the loved one, because we can’t find ourselves anymore in the definition love provided?That’s Aurelia casting her doubts about her own attitude as a philosophical generality. So, by indirection and generality, we do come to the individual Aurelia. If the generality made it iffy for me, the next line spoiled it. “Aurelia had done just this,” that is, she had just metaphorically "killed off" her loved one, as we already knew. But most importantly, what does Aurelia do now with her new realization? We aren't told or show. In fact, the next sentence is delivered in a dismissive passive voice that seems to distance us further from the real Aurelia. “A divorce agreement was drawn and signed.” (p. 162). t– Characters sometimes seem to have almost no reaction to major changes in their lives. When Crow is found not guilty, his reaction is so subtle you could miss it. He must have felt many things besides a strained relationship with Sophie, but if so we are not privy to them. I liked the way reactions to things were often muted by displacement, but I wanted to sense the intensity more than I was able to.t– Sometimes Cox shifts from the mind of one character to the mind of another and back so quickly that our time in a character’s mind doesn’t seem very important; instead of a deepening I felt a dilution.tThe younger characters put their own teenaged brand on foolishness, crime and misery; yes, parents generally worry and suffer for their children’s well-being. But – this may be the real explanation for the distance I felt– I’m an old man and disinclined to conceptualize the crimes, errors, misery and pain of individuals as representative of something else besides crime, error, misery and pain. tStill, days after finishing the book, I do remember the characters and their troubles, some of their names. So, for me, it was a book worth reading. In fact, I’m curious enough to want more education in Cox’s work. I have another of her novels on my shelf for reading in the near future.
Sophie and her mom moved to small-town Tennessee after her father's death. The two quickly make friends in the town and Sophie, being as beautiful as she is, attracts the attention of more than a few teenage boys. Despite there being much interest from other guys, Sophie finds herself attracted to Crow and the two start dating. One night, during a party, they slip out into the woods deciding this will be the first time they have sex. Unprepared, Crow quickly heads to his car to grab protection and Sophie is raped multiple times and left for dead. Crow knows that he will be to blame, but who really did this? There's quite a sense for foreboding over this entire book which makes it a page turner. I wanted to figure out who did this and whether they were going to get away with it. You know from the start that Crow wasn't responsible but he is charged and no one comes to his aid. This event not only permanently changes Sophie, but seems to change the entire dynamic of the town which was interesting to read. While I enjoyed this novel, I found that there were way too many male teenage characters to keep track of, some that added no value to the story whatsoever. By the time we were told who was responsible, I couldn't even remember the names of one of them. This is not world class literature. The writing isn't fantastic (just look at the first line from the book), but the story is compelling.
What do You think about The Slow Moon (2006)?
I stumbled across this one at a used book store. I decided I must read it because of Jodi Picoult's review on the cover..."I found myself pausing over the beauty of this book, and wishing I'd been the one to think of it." ~ Jodi PicoultSuch quick and wonderful read! I loved it. True that it was pretty easy to figure out the "who done its" early on, I still hung on every word weaved by Elizabeth Cox. What a great job she did in describing each of the characters and their histories. I felt like I knew them; as if I lived in their little community of South Pittsburgh, TN... Elizabeth also did a beautiful job describing the setting surrounding that area of Tennessee, too. Living only about 90 miles from South Pittsburgh, she described the scenery/setting and change of seasons that take place in this rural area of Tennessee perfectly.This is the first book I have read by Elizabeth Cox, and definitely not the last!!
—Sheryl
The plot of this book is interesting and with better writing, character depth, and more meat to the plot it would have been an excellent read. This was a quick read due to the basic level of writing. At first, I thought it was written for teens but a few pages in there was a graphic sex scene so then I realized that it wasn't. The author does not transition into other story lines well and sometimes I found it confusing and had to re-read just to figure out who I was reading about. Many of the stories were semi-random and almost didn't fit into the movement of the book. There were also bizarre racial references that were almost awkward to read throughout the book. Race was not really a running story in the book so the two or three sentences that contained something about a character being black were out of place. Lastly, there were too many metaphors and most seemed almost forced. A lot of the metaphors didn't necessarily fit and flow with the text. Overall, I suppose I didn't hate the book. I was interested to see how everything turned out with all involved. In the end I was disappointed that loose ends with many characters were not tied up. It seems as though the author was trying to allow the reader to infer what happened to the characters but with the basic writing and weak story development it just didn't happen. I don't know that I would read more of this author's work. Just not my cup of tea :)
—Stephanie
I might have enjoyed this book more than 3 stars worth, but for some reason, I don't feel it is worthy of 4 stars. The story is definitely engaging, and I was grabbed in the first few pages. The writing is such that things are revealed about all the characters gradually and in a way you're not sure how they are relevant, which kept things interesting, but also at times felt a little disjointed. Then other parts of the main story seemed so abrupt. The subject matter is probably not for everyone, as it deals with the sexual assault of a young teen. It was an interesting narrative and worth the read, in my opinion. Just not my favorite.
—Whitney
