Advena Goodwin didn’t set out to become a detective. She would rather
write her dissertation and fall in love, but her friend has been murdered.
REVIEW:
You Enter a Room
Nancy Avery Dafoe
Reviewed by G. Lloyd Helm
Five Stars
I love this book! It is
intriguing, literate, poetic, rich in its detail of the thought processes of
the heroine. It has it's romantic flavoring as well but the story is the important thing. And the
questions. Is Gould really a plagiarist who kills his promising students and
steals their poetry, or is the young lady poet just letting her imagination run
away with her. I flip flopped on that idea a couple of times as I read it.
This book is great. I highly
recommend it. It is full of the taste of poetry and academia and well worth the
read.
“Yeah, well, they
meant business, so I knew something was going down there. After circling the
house, the cops pounded on the door again, then one of them looks through a
window he’d already passed and returned to, standing on his toes, and yells
something. The other one comes back to the front, or I guess, really a side
door, and starts kicking at it. Then both of them were smashing their boots
against the door. I mean, I’ve seen this kind of smash in the door on TV, but
to actually see these guys break something down is damned impressive.”
Suddenly, I wanted
him to slow up and not say the next part out loud, but Sam urged him on.
“Then?”
“They went in, and I
ran across the street like I was still jogging and looked in the open doorway
because I guess I wasn’t thinking about anybody having guns, and I realize that
wasn’t the smartest thing for me to do—see, I wasn’t even thinking about myself
at that point.”
“Andrew!” I wanted
to slap him.
“It was awful,
really. This guy, he was hanging from the ceiling fixture at the top.” I
covered my face and Sam gripped my arm, her painted nails digging in and
leaving little impressions. “They were trying to get him down, so they didn’t
see me. One cop grabbed his legs and pulled him back to the top of the stairs
to check for a pulse. Then he let him go, accidentally, I think, and the guy
starts swinging back and forth like a pendulum. I stepped back then because I’d
never seen a dead person hanging like that, and that’s when I saw his boot at
the bottom just inside the door. One of his boots was still on, but the other
had fallen. I was so close that I could have picked it up. I went back to the
other side of the street and called my friend Jay to come get me. I was
starting to feel sick.”
At first the detail
of the boot seemed pointless and then I saw the image as clearly as Andrew had,
marking the death of the individual. Michael’s boot, the worn, old leather ones
that he wore every day. “How do you know the shoe or boot was Michael
Lawler's?” Sam asked. “Did you know him?”
“No, never heard of
him, but when an ambulance pulled up and the EMTs went in, I was still waiting
for my friend. Jay had been sleeping in that morning because he didn’t have
class, so he wasn’t there yet. See, I didn’t feel like running anymore, I was
nauseous, like you.” He looks at me, then said, “Just like you. Another cop
came and took pictures, then they brought out his body covered up like on a TV
show. One of the cops said to the other, ‘Anything in his pockets?’”
““License says
Michael Lawler,” I’m pretty sure the cop said. “Student ID on him too.
University of Rochester student. Suicide.” I didn’t want the cops to notice me,
so I stepped back further and ducked around behind a house. Thinking about what
I did now, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea because they might have thought I
had something to do with it, like I was involved in a murder or something. I
mean, he was hanging, but who knew how he got there, even if he did say
suicide?”
“Oh, no,” was all I
could get out. Sam was crying. Looking back later, I realized Andrew might have
been the one to put the word 'murder' in my head.
“You’re sure?” Sam
asked, and he nodded. I liked Sam a little bit more during those moments we
were drawn together in horror. Whatever else life held for either of us, we
experienced a temporary bond in that claustrophobic space where breathing
becomes more difficult.
Andrew waited a few
minutes but saw that neither one of us was up to questioning him further, so he
walked off, ready to repeat his tale. He probably had friends back home who had
yet to hear of his dramatic morning. That would be all the experience was for
Andrew, an opportunity to enlarge his life.
Sam hugged me, and I
took that solace greedily. We finally stopped holding one another. “You okay?”
she asked.
I nodded, “I can’t
believe it.”
“Me either. I’m so
sorry, but I’ve got to go,” and we parted. As soon as I left the bookstore, I
was hit again, my whole body aching. By the time I reached my apartment, my
head hurt so badly that I turned off the lights, pulled the curtains, and
rolled into a fetal position on my bed where I stayed for hours. It didn’t help
and changed nothing. Hours later, I woke to restless fear and more nausea.
Although I didn’t
know Michael well, I was aware of his peculiarities, his withdrawn silence, his
intelligence and gentleness. What was certain was I wanted to know him better.
What I recognized him best for, however, was his talent. We had read each
other’s work on multiple occasions, wrote a few comments that were generous
rather than critical. I couldn’t quite believe that Michael had taken his own
life, that he was gone. Logically, my search should have ended there with his
death and certainty. We were told he had hanged himself. Everything should have
been obvious, as related circumstances appeared to be to nearly everyone around
me, but suicide and Michael did not fit, would never fit.
My mind kept seeing
Michael’s worn boot at the bottom of the stairs and then him swinging when the
cop let go of his body either accidentally or deliberately. Unlike Andrew, I
was not a witness, had not been at the crime scene, but I might as well have
been because I conjured up the sight as clearly as if I had been standing
outside in the snow, looking through that open doorway. My eyes followed a line
of dread up narrow stairs in disbelief, but I kept turning away before seeing
his distorted face, as if I couldn’t bear to look at him in death, even in
imagination.
REVIEW:
You Enter a Room
Nancy Avery Dafoe
Reviewed by Jeffery Ross
Five Stars!
I enjoyed
reading this campus novel-detective story very much. I was reminded of my own
stints in Department of English grad school. Author Dafoe does a magnificent
job of capturing the bizarre-- yet captivating—artifice of the dedicated
academic life. Her portrayals of both pompous—and kind—Professors of English
are spot on—and so is her analysis of the eerie and occasionally debilitating
relationships between grad assistants and their professors. Dafoe is an
award-winning author, and her use of language and poetry in this novel provides
evidence she is a first-rate writer and craftsperson.
Don’t
be put off by any allusions to obscure 1920’s European writers and painters—or
fleeting references to Foucault, post-modernism, or the politics of authorship.
Such literary connections are necessary in this book—and provide a rich context
for the mystery and its amazing resolution. You will be captivated by Advena
(the grad assistant-turned sleuth) as she tirelessly pieces together a puzzle
using her own trained literary awareness—and poems written by other
students.
Author
Bio
She recently won the William Faulkner-William
Wisdom creative writing award in poetry for 2016 and previously won the New
Century Writer award for short stories. Dafoe’s poems, essays, and stories have
appeared in numerous literary publications. Her fiction work also appears in
the anthology Lost Orchard, published
by SUNY Press in 2014.
KEYWORDS
Murder mystery; Woman amateur detective
Blog URL: info@dafoenteachingwriting.com
Facebook page: Nancy Dafoe, Nancy A. Dafoe, Dafoe
Writing and Consulting
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