Review: "Nightwoods" by Charles Frazier

Written by Lauryn Smith

What do you get when you mix solitude, murder and a touch of love affair? Charles Frazier’s 2011 fiction novel, "Nightwoods."

"Nightwoods" follows the story of Luce, a woman who finds herself the caretaker of her murdered sister’s twin children. Living in an isolated, rural area of 1960s North Carolina, Luce is accustomed to seclusion, living apart from society. In fact, she enjoys it.

In "Nightwoods," Frazier, who is also the author of "Thirteen Moons" and "Cold Mountain," portrays how Luce learns to help the twins overcome their troubling past while at the same time protect them, particularly from their deceased mother’s husband named Bud, a man (not the twins’ biological father) with insidious intentions.

Frazier’s protagonist has a troubling past of her own, which allows her to relate to the taciturn children. Though Frazier seems to attempt to demonstrate through Luce’s character how a person’s past can affect his or her present, Luce ends up coming across as static—always strong, always contemplative, always passionate. The children, on the other hand, are clearly dynamic. Normally closed off, introverted and outwardly “feebleminded,” they exhibit courage and resourcefulness when conditions call for such traits. It could be argued that Frazier should have hinted more toward how Luce’s history affects her adult self. Perhaps Frazier left this aspect open-ended to prompt readers to actively conceptualize on their own.

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