My Life With Corpses: A Novel [Hardcover]

Raised in Kansas by a family of dead people, the protagonist of this blackly humorous, cerebral novel relies on philosophy to make sense of her odd predicament. Oz's mother died in childbirth—10 years before Oz was conceived. Her sister died as a young child. Only her father remained, hovering between life and death until she was 10 years old. In Oz's experience, dead people move through the world looking and acting much the same as live people but lacking human emotions. The present action of the novel unfolds as the adult Oz oversees the exhumation of the grave of Winfield Evan Stark, the man who saved her from her life among the dead and whose body might be missing. Only Oz understands that if it is, it might be because he is using it. While she waits for the gravediggers to do their work, Oz recounts for the reader her struggles to learn to feel and to deal with the consequences of her feelings. The story works best on a metaphorical level with understated humor deriving from ironic double meanings: "There are, you see, more corpses in academia than anywhere else you might name." Oz's day-to-day challenges as a student and a professor in Oxford, Miss., coping with unsatisfactory love affairs and seeking solace with animals are less compelling than her observations of how the waking dead differ from the living. Despite the fantasy of her premise, Dunbar (Margaret Cape) presents her story with straight-faced candor, informed by a philosopher's grasp of logic (both the author and narrator are trained philosophers). The novel's refusal to acknowledge that the phenomenon recounted might be impossible to believe and the accumulation of realistic detail make this an uncannily convincing evocation of death and its counterpart, life.
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Dunbar's quirky exploration of the thin line between life and death will appeal to fans of surrealistic fiction. Raised by a family of corpses, Oz, a Kansas farm girl, must learn to navigate among the living after her dead family finally succumbs to the grave. Never having been taught to feel by her deceased family--corpses, of course, have^B no feelings--she must undergo a slow and often confusing emotional rebirth when she is exposed to living persons on a more regular basis. Perhaps most surprising of all is her eventual realization that her parents and her sister were not the only corpses living seemingly ordinary lives in everyday society. A contemporary gothic narrative without the romantic underpinnings. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

"Overwhelming in its beauty, emotional force, and uniqueness. I have the strange feeling I'm still reading it---it's that resonant." (author of Everything is Illuminated )

"Despite the fantasy of her premise, Dunbar presents her story with straight-faced candor, informed by a philosopher's grasp of logic." (Publishers Weekly )

"Unusually strange and compelling." (library Journal )

The writing is so beautifully assured that we have no desire to leave Dunbar's surreal fictional world." (Washington Times )

"In a skillful use of magical realism, Dunbar makes her corpses real, not metaphorical." (San Diego Union Tribune )

"Extraordinary talent...quite entertaining." (Wichita Eagle )

Raised in Kansas by a family of dead people, the protagonist of this blackly humorous, cerebral novel relies on philosophy to make sense of her odd predicament. Oz's mother died in childbirth—10 years before Oz was conceived. Her sister died as a young child. Only her father remained, hovering between life and death until she was 10 years old. In Oz's experience, dead people move through the world looking and acting much the same as live people but lacking human emotions. The present action of the novel unfolds as the adult Oz oversees the exhumation of the grave of Winfield Evan Stark, the man who saved her from her life among the dead and whose body might be missing. Only Oz understands that if it is, it might be because he is using it. While she waits for the gravediggers to do their work, Oz recounts for the reader her struggles to learn to feel and to deal with the consequences of her feelings. The story works best on a metaphorical level with understated humor deriving from ironic double meanings: "There are, you see, more corpses in academia than anywhere else you might name." Oz's day-to-day challenges as a student and a professor in Oxford, Miss., coping with unsatisfactory love affairs and seeking solace with animals are less compelling than her observations of how the waking dead differ from the living. Despite the fantasy of her premise, Dunbar (Margaret Cape) presents her story with straight-faced candor, informed by a philosopher's grasp of logic (both the author and narrator are trained philosophers). The novel's refusal to acknowledge that the phenomenon recounted might be impossible to believe and the accumulation of realistic detail make this an uncannily convincing evocation of death and its counterpart, life.
(Publishers Weekly )

Dunbar's quirky exploration of the thin line between life and death will appeal to fans of surrealistic fiction. Raised by a family of corpses, Oz, a Kansas farm girl, must learn to navigate among the living after her dead family finally succumbs to the grave. Never having been taught to feel by her deceased family--corpses, of course, have^B no feelings--she must undergo a slow and often confusing emotional rebirth when she is exposed to living persons on a more regular basis. Perhaps most surprising of all is her eventual realization that her parents and her sister were not the only corpses living seemingly ordinary lives in everyday society. A contemporary gothic narrative without the romantic underpinnings. (Booklist - Margaret Flanagan )

My Life with Corpses blends a sharply defined reality with a soaring leap of imagination in the story of an enigmatic narrator we know only as Oz, a Kansas girl raised by a family of dead people. Oz tells how she survived her childhood only to face new dangers: the terrible risks of having feelings and the discovery that her family were not the only dead people walking around looking as if they were alive. Author of the award-winning Margaret Cape,Wylene Dunbar has written a novel that looks into our hearts and souls with intelligence, humor, and, finally, wisdom.

Wylene Dunbar was born in Sterling, Kansas, the daughter of a wheat farmer and an artist. After finishing high school, she attended Wichita State University where she graduated cum laude with a degree in mathematics and sufficient hours in philosophy to pursue graduate study. Three years later, she received a doctorate in philosophy from Vanderbilt University and returned to Kansas to write a novel, but she soon came to a realization: “I was twenty-four. I had nothing to say.” Giving up any further thought of writing fiction, Dunbar accepted a position in the department of philosophy and religions at the University of Mississippi. She taught philosophy for several years before entering Ole Miss Law School, where she graduated first in her class. After ten years working in a civil trial practice, Dunbar unexpectedly came full circle to the writing she had given up years before. She first wrote My Life with Corpses as a short story, using the pen name W. W. Michaud. The story was published in the South Dakota Review. She then wrote her first novel, Margaret Cape (Harcourt, 1997), which won critical praise and the 1998 Best Fiction Award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. In her second novel, My Life with Corpses (Harcourt, 2004), Dunbar returns to the subject and setting of her earlier short story. An Oxford, Mississippi, resident for many years, Dunbar now lives in northern California.

THE CEMETERY Winfield Evan Stark is missing from his grave and in his place is my book. At least that is what an entire community of plainspoken, common sensible Kansas farmers has come to believe, that a man's cof?n and the body in it have vanished, interred in their stead a "brand-spanking-new" copy of a book (an account, really) I wrote some years ago. Of course, I came here at once- to Laurel Cemetery, I mean-and that is where I am writing this. It is quite clear, you see, that Mr. Stark wishes that much of me, and when a man has rescued you from both corpses and corpsedom, a great deal is owed. I have some company. My old dog, Annie, lies beside me, and across the cemetery, the diggers are here to work, but I mean the company of those persons watching from outside the ?eld wire fence. They have gathered from a clutch of six or seven since my arrival yesterday to nearly a dozen early this morning, and the number is growing. They watch me at Mr. Stark's empty grave and when I tour the other headstones-all the while as solemn as if they were here on the usual business. Once, I approached them to exchange greetings, but they spooked and backed away. My power to frighten these good people remains undiminished. There was a little stir earlier, too, when they saw I was holding the book, the very copy found in lieu of the old man's body and given to me last evening by Evan Crews. It was Evan, as well, who called me a week ago to say that his late grandfather had disappeared and to ask, very delicately I must admit, whether I knew where he might have gone. "I don't know," I lied, and then corrected myself to say, "It is dif?cult to tell," the more usual case with what is so. While I did not know Mr. Stark's particular whereabouts, you see, neither was it true to say that I knew nothing of them at all. Half-truth is a special skill of mine, my life having required more of it than is usual. But that was last week. What I write you now is not a ?ction or even half-true but, instead, the whole of what I know, if long concealed. I have done with lying and, despite the perils that telling may present, even God's holding a ?nger to the divine lips would be insuf?cient to dissuade me from it. Just as before, you may not believe me, but that is no matter. I have appreciated for some time that what is right and true is rarely even given a pat as it trots by while the ?imsiest lie is welcomed indoors, where it can take a community by the throat and never let go. Still, knowing is not without its shortcomings and you might rather remain ignorant. If so, I will understand. Think of it as a war-it is almost that-where others will ?ght the battles for you. For my part, I will tell the truth and fervently hope that it is the wise, not wrong, act. The Holy Bible tells us, after all, that "wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good." Now, as you may recall, this is what I wrote you then: You have heard the story of the boy who was