Circling vultures are rarely an upbeat sign, especially in a work of fiction. And in this latest from Joyce Carol Oates, vultures appear on the opening page, “swooping with a look of grisly frolic” above a southern New Jersey nature preserve.
Fox is the tale of sexual predator and paedophile Francis Harlan Fox, a charismatic middle school teacher who brings misery to an unsuspecting community.
It’s dark territory for any novel, but not entirely surprising for celebrated author Oates, who is well known for her gothic horror and psychological realism. Many of the 62 works that make up the 87-year-old’s huge back catalogue – including the two most recent, Butcher and Babysitter – explore deviant criminal behaviour, particularly against women.
Oates has said that the inspiration for Fox came from a true case: a sexual predator – “so charming, actually a good teacher” – who exploited his classroom power to abuse vulnerable girls. Particularly disturbing was that the man almost got away with it; his victims believed they were in love and refused to give him up. “It sort of outraged me,” Oates said in a recent interview.
Which perhaps explains why this novel opens with her fictional villain’s deeds thoroughly avenged. The vultures’ slow circling leads to Fox’s half-submerged car in Wieland’s scenic marshlands, the body of its driver so decomposed and picked apart by wild creatures that it takes weeks for a formal confirmation of identity.
The news, when it comes, shakes the community: Mr Fox was a much-loved English teacher at the town’s elite Langhorne Academy, a seemingly genuine bloke.
A police inquiry gets under way – enter down-at-heel local detective Horace Zwender – and things, naturally, get challenging. Was Fox’s death an accident, suicide or something more sinister?
When it becomes clear that he was, in fact, murdered – and when the contents of his computer expose him as a paedophile who had been abusing girls at several different schools over several years – Zwender’s job shifts from challenging to morally complex.
The detective is investigating the murder of someone who clearly deserved his gruesome ending. But is the Wieland community prepared for the full truth? And can Zwender now feel anything other than sympathy for the yet-to-be-identified killer?
Adding to the novel’s impact is Oates’ masterful delivery. The action is deliberately cinematic and episodic: chapters switch backwards and forwards in time, before the murder and after. Language provides connection as well as dramatic effect, with short, rhythmic sentences and repetition giving crucial moments a nightmarish quality: “Each time Little Kitten has held herself still and not squirming … each of these times Little Kitten has been given a present out of Mr Fox’s drawer just for her.”
And the reader gets a full 360-degree view of it all: perspective shifts seamlessly between characters, including Zwender, Fox’s vain school principal and jealous colleagues, his still-besotted victims, their disbelieving parents and, most sickeningly, the man himself.
We learn early on that Fox is not the gap-toothed charmer many believe him to be. He has arrived at Wieland and Langhorne Academy already on the run: at his previous school, where he was known as Frank Farrell, one of his distraught young victims committed suicide. The girl’s death forced his hurried exit from his job and the area, but he emerges in Wieland – thanks to the efforts of a lawyer clearly familiar with murky scenarios of this kind – with a new identity and glowing professional references.
It was a close call, but Fox’s new life takes on familiar patterns. He grooms not only fresh prepubescent victims, but a force field of adult supporters that include colleagues, would-be girlfriends, parents and the school principal. In the classroom, he is soon in the grip of his fantasies, callously applying the reinforcement and punishment principles of US behaviouralist BF Skinner to wield control over his students. “He felt a surge of elation, a visceral thrill almost sexual in its intensity, realising how his very maleness assured authority.”
Fox’s office, meanwhile, is a shrine to his ego and tarnished literary idols: a bust of Edgar Allan Poe sits (it proves) portentously on his desk; on the wall is an image of Lewis Carroll’s white-socked Alice in Wonderland, the classic female character who was Oates’ own literary inspiration as a child.
After hours, it becomes the site of claustrophobic horror. When the door is locked behind Fox’s intended victims – who are then sedated with Ambien-laced sweets – they, like the reader, have nowhere to run.
On one level, Fox will satisfy as an engrossing and confronting whodunnit, a novel with a final plot twist well worth the 650-page buildup. But Oates’ latest isn’t that easily set aside.
As an exploration of evil hiding in plain sight, enabled by supposedly well-meaning but ultimately self-serving individuals and institutions, it’s a warning for us all.
