An Eerie Unfolding of Tragedy in a Small Town That Demands: How Well Do We Know Anyone Really; Even Ourselves?
“The fateful morning blankets rolling hills, shoddy streets. Stone buildings breathe ancient air. Time is tight-knit, and it’s holding its breath.”
Foe is a sophisticated sophomore novel from poet/book-pedler/baker/hat-wearer Hannah Cao which drags the reader along scalp-first with a thrilling mystery plot.
When 21-year-old university student Sana Mercer goes missing, everyone is shocked. She’s beautiful, intelligent, elegant, from the perfect family and with the perfect social circle. Girls like that don’t just drop off the face of the earth. And yet, Eden Nurain, lead detective, finds herself scrambling to find any hint of a warm lead, though she suspects that Sana’s best friend Odessa and boyfriend Bastien either know more than they are letting on, or perhaps know even less about Sana than they themselves believe.
“Sana never noticed how that kind of perfection, even unintentional, could scrape at another person.”
It was through her poetry that I first encountered Cao, but in recent years, she has turned her pen to prose. Cao’s first novel, Café at 46 Old Street, was a character-driven analysis of the importance of community and communication. It is no coincidence that the novel is set within a café; Cao is the proprietor of bookshop-cum-cafe Read the Room in Dresden’s trendy Hauptstraße district.
Cao’s naturally poetic and confessional style of writing lends itself well to the description of Foe’s setting; the fictional British university town of Lindleigh. Initially a sleepy town where nothing of note ever happens, Cao builds suspense by lifting and lowering a veil of threat across the town’s otherwise sweet and soporific façade. Exploring the often parasocial relationships between her characters through introspective monologues, she asks her reader to consider how well anyone really knows another person.
“Rumours never get the details right. They never describe how big a room gets when a life disappears from it.”
Foe comprises not only the fluid prose that made Cao’s debut so remarkable, but also police interviews and snippets from a true crime podcast, the hosts taking on the role of a Greek Chorus to comment on the action as it unfolds. Despite the popularity of such media, Cao does not shy away from casting a critical lens on them, asking where the line is between exposure and invasion.
Full disclosure; Hannah Cao is a friend of mine. She’s the kind of friend to fly across the continent to surprise you on a random Saturday. Our relationship is deeply personal, but it could just have easily remained purely parasocial –before I was her friend, I was an avid fan of her poetry. Cao grew up in Germany teaching herself English to keep her diary entries secret from her Vietnamese-speaking parents. As such, while German became the language of legal documents and schoolwork, English became her emotional refuge. It can come as a surprise to no one that she grew into a talented poet, and her recent forays into prose are a more than welcome natural development.
“Lindleigh has a stillness that isn’t quite peace. It watches her. The trees lean a little too far toward the roads, as if listening. Something behind the tranquility purrs at her, like wires under water.”
All in all Foe, out November 7th, is a gripping and thoughtful contribution to the mystery genre, and I look forward to seeing which literary threads she turns her spindle to next.
Next time you’re in Dresden, pop into Read the Room for a ceremonial grade matcha, homemade sweet treat, and a copy of Hannah Cao’s sophomore novel, Foe. If however you aren’t in the neighborhood any time soon, Foe can be purchased in digital and paperback formats via various channels listed on the In A Room Alone Press website, including Amazon and Apple Books.
