Haven Squire’s Reviews > Mrs Fox > Status Update

It is interesting actually if the whole thing was supposed to represent him being unable to control her, how he is still possessive over her and over the cubs even when they are literally wild animals. But then now that I look back on it I just think it was very weird and the story had no resolution other than everyone just moving on and not really recognising how strange this all was.

I dunno, I feel very conflicted because when I was reading it I don't think I was feeling overly negative about it, like I feel like it felt pretty neutral and there were even some parts which I liked (when they were not talking about sex and when the man was being caring towards the cubs and the fox not in a weird way)

I liked that he was so protective of them but not the reason for this. In the end it just felt like nothing was really resolved - the man just kind of moved on from the fact that his wife was now a fox and it was never revealed why this had happened or what the reason for it was in the story (like why write a story about this in the first place).

I came to like the story more when he let her back into the wild and would only visit her in the woods - that seemed nicer and more normal. It was also sweet that she had cubs (and slightly ironic as I had initially thought the woman was ill at the start because she was pregnant). It was definitely very weird that the man associated these cubs as being his though.

I mean perhaps it was (something about the man being unable to control her etc.) but that just never fully came across and the fact she remained a fox for the entire rest of the story was a little odd and actually slightly disturbing. The image of him carrying this fox back to his house and trapping her there for a while wasn't particularly nice.

Despite it being called 'Mrs Fox' this did not make me at all think it would be about an actual fox so when the wife strangely metamorphosised into one during their walk in the woods I was mostly just confused. I had not expected the book to be this sort of magical realism and so the whole thing initially felt out of place. I just thought it would be him seeing things or was being used to represent something.

The beginning felt weirdly focused around the sex life of the characters and their relationship in this form which was fine although a bit of a weird place to start. When we moved on from this though I was quite liking the writing style and the way it was written (third person but from the man's kind of perspective and in present tense) as it was easy to read and connect with.

I read this as a secondary piece of reading for my uni course and decided to include it as a book read as it is a work in and of itself (despite being a very short story) whereas others I have read have been parts of larger collections etc. I didn't know what to expect going into this but it definitely wasn't what I got.