Murther and Walking Spirits

Patricia Morley is a professor of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University, an associate fellow of the Simone de Beauvoir
Institute, and author of Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Home.

Davies’s writing seems as rich and creative as ever—Murther and
Walking Spirits can vie confidently with Fifth Business as one of his
very best novels.

The narrative is richly composed of history, theology and Blakeian
speculation, and human nature and emotions. The latter take centre
stage. Speculation, fascinating as it may be, is never permitted to
overwhelm the story as it did in earlier novels such as The Manticore.

The novel’s voice, warm and engaging, comes from the next world.
“Gil” Gilmartin, the 44-year-old narrator, has just been murdered by
his wife’s lover as the novel begins. His murderer is a junior
colleague at the Toronto newspaper where Gil is the Entertainment editor
and “the Sniffer,” the film critic. Gil feels he has been robbed of
30 years of life and seeks revenge.

His afterlife education begins as he replays talks with his best
friend, Hugh McWearie, a stern Scot who is the paper’s Religion
columnist. Talk of Swedenborg and Blake establish that many religions
are “very great on rebirth” and belief in a waiting period before
rebirth.

Gil’s waiting is taken up with a private film festival that shows him
the lives of his ancestors in Revolutionary and Loyalist America,
nineteenth-century Wales, and Victorian Canada. The narrative thread
winds through a rich mélange of social history without being distracted
by it.

Murther portrays the Canada of our own time, some of the central
cultures that fed it, and reflections on the human spirit that will
stand the test of time.