“Fox” (post 1) a novel by Joyce Carol Oates: Engaging Vocabulary

Front Flap (1):

“beguiles”

“hypnotic”

“magnetically diabolical”

“multiple points of view”

Pages 8-12 (1)

“Yes yes I will do anything you ask.”

“Under the command of her human”

“she is obliged to obey”

“hypnotized”

“For this, I was born”

Comment: If the title character will be a hypnotic villain, the above may be seen as just setting the stage. But is it inadvertently, mildly, hypnotizing avid readers?  Having learned the basics of hypnosis from my past decades as a psychiatrist, I know that the above is probably sufficient to mildly hypnotize highly hypnotizable people, which may include avid readers in their avid reading frame-of-mind. Indeed, “multiple points of view” may be particularly engaging of readers with a mild degree of multiple personality, which is more common than most people think.

Of course, all successful novelists know ways to engage their readers. It’s their job.

1. Joyce Carol Oates. Fox. New York, Hogarth, 2025.