If you were raised by corpses it would be understandable if you were
lacking in some of the social skills most of us take for granted. You might,
for example, have difficulty with emotional expression. It’s unlikely that you
would understand the subtleties of language. You could be forgiven for
believing you were a corpse yourself. It would take a considerable effort to
redeem such a life, and there could be no guarantee of success. Such is the
task facing S ‘Oz’ Oscar, the chief protagonist of Wylene Dunbar’s second
novel, My Life With Corpses.

Early in her life, Oz becomes aware that her family are dead, with the
exception of her father, who is dying but who retains a foothold in the world
of the living ("it is only because he was still twitching in the aftermath
of death when I came along that I suspected humans might be capable of living
at all.") The narrator compares herself to a feral child raised by wolves:
how could she be expected to discern her true nature when her only role models
were dead? From this unlikely premise Oz’s story unfolds: a relentless pursuit
of the life that her immediate experience denies her.

The story begins in mid-life. Oz returns to Laurel cemetery, called to
help solve the mystery of the disappearance of the body of Mr. Evan Stark. Mr.
Stark is a former neighbor; Oz’s childhood confidante, the only person who
understood her bizarre family, and whose intervention lead to Oz being placed
in foster care. Mr. Stark had died ten years earlier. When gravediggers noticed
that his coffin was not where it had been buried, and that in its stead there
was a copy of an account Oz had written of her life with corpses, she is
summoned to help unravel the mystery. The mystery continues throughout the
book, with the narrative cutting back and forth between the scene at the
cemetery, and a recounting of Oz’s life. We read of her childhood, her time as
a student, her infatuation with philosophy lecturer Jeanette Napoleon, and then
with philosophy itself, her failed relationships, the gradual unfolding of the
presence of corpses in the world, and the consequences for those who encounter
them. Dunbar’s academic training as a philosopher furnishes her protagonist
with the conceptual skills to work her way through life with corpses. There are
references to Wittgenstein’s theory of language, Descartes’ cogito, category
mistakes, and to philosophy of science. None of these require more than a
passing acquaintance with the discipline of philosophy, but such an
acquaintance will add a measure of enjoyment to reading My Life With Corpses, especially when Oz,
like Dunbar, becomes a professional philosopher.

It’s a strange story, although Oz would have it that life’s is like
that. Oz hones her philosophical skills in pursuit of the truth that has thus
far eluded her. She becomes aware that there are corpses everywhere; the
academy is particularly notable for them, both amongst the faculty and the
students. As author Dunbar is aware that her premise stretches credibility, but
she is always at hand for a deft description or plausible explanation. Dunbar
is an ingenious inventor; she can explain why corpses eat despite not needing
sustenance (they need to be weighed down); and how corpse experience intimacy
("we bury our dead collectively in cemeteries€¦. couples and relatives
express the desire to be buried side by side.")

A dark and dry humor pervades this novel. Oz cautions that when someone
is so totally smitten with love for you, and particularly where that involves
qualities you were unaware of possessing, there has most likely been a ‘mistake
of identity’. Reflecting on statistics about hazardous occupations, she finds
that being a professor of philosophy is much more dangerous than being a
construction worker or miner. In describing student corpses Oz tell us that
"those few who were dead were more recently so and thus not yet thoroughly
decomposed".

At times it seems that the weight of working with such an unlikely
premise may be too much. There is always one more development, one more
explanation, one more layer to unfold. But Dunbar is always equal to the task,
and in the end the reader learns to trust that there are no insurmountable problems.
Dunbar will find a way of resolving the most improbable scenarios, such as the
realization that husband Judah has ways of extracting life from the other
people, thus rendering even the living into lifeless counterfeits. Oz’s
realization that she herself may be drawn into the world of corpses leads to a
defining moment where Oz is forced to exercise an agency she was unaware of
possessing. Having done it once, however, she is able to do it again. The
triumph against the odds bears comparison to every heroine’s valiant struggle
in the face of a dastardly foe.

It is tempting to speculate about Dunbar’s ‘point’ in My Life With Corpses.
Are the corpses simply people who have lost their vitality and have withdrawn
from life? Is Oz autistic, or a sensitive observer, struggling to engage in a
world that doesn’t understand her? It would be a shame to lose the beauty and
power of Dunbar’s narrative in an over analysis of deeper layers of meaning. Oz
would disapprove. Her own search for truth revealed the dangers of abstracting
ideals from their real world context; she is keenly aware that in the hands of
a corpse, even the greatest truths of philosophy have little application to the
practical world. My Life With Corpses will certainly bear interpretation.  But it is best enjoyed as a work of fiction,
albeit a cerebral and complex one.

© 2004 Tony O’Brien

Tony O’Brien M Phil., Lecturer,
Mental Health Nursing, University of Auckland

Categories: Fiction