Subject: Review: Robertson Davies' _Murther & Walking Spirits_

From: [email-masked] (Paul S Jenkins)
Date: 11 May 1999 13:15:37 -0400

_Murther & Walking Spirits_ by Robertson Davies
	Review Copyright (c) 1999 Paul S. Jenkins

This is a frame story; journalist Connor Gilmartin, having been
unceremoniously murdered by his wife's lover, sits incorporeally next to
his murderer at the Toronto Film Festival, watching from the afterlife as
a filmic representation of the lives of his forebears is presented to him.
The drama-documentary is in Davies' typical style, with his broad sweep
across generations -- more so than usual as he can invent dramatic points
of view without restriction.

The story of Gil's ancestors is one of struggle and hardship -- a history
of Canadian settlers. But what do we learn from this? We see what it's
like for the prior generations, but there's little sense of an overall
plot. It's a kind of fictional multi-memoir. Davies' writing style is a
joy to indulge in, but the detachment that the 'frame device' inevitably
brings gives the memoir a dispassionate slant -- reinforced by the
narrator's continual references to his own spiritual state.

It's a strange book -- involving and superbly written, but at the end
curiously unsatisfying -- as if it was leading up to something that never
quite occurs. It lacks the detailed characterization and sheer power of
some of Davies' other work -- the Cornish trilogy, for example. What we
actually get in _Murther_ is a resolution of sorts, but not of the
'history'. The narrator seeks a kind of peace; the reader waits for a
climax to the book, and ends up with something else.

%A   Davies, Robertson
%T   Murther & Walking Spirits
%I   Penguin
%C   London
%D   1992 
%G   ISBN 0 14 015932 0
%P   357 pp.
%O   paperback GBP 5.99

Paul S. Jenkins | More reviews at: 
Portsmouth   UK | http://www.cix.co.uk/~willowsoft/revup/