Review of In the First Early Days of My Death
“Wendy Li knows who her murderer is as she lies nude at the foot of her staircase under the parka she wears. When she finds herself floating above the streets of Winnipeg, she realizes things aren't going her way. She suspects her husband's former lover and is not happy with the way her murder investigation is going. Wendy is the ghostly protagonist of the new novel by Catherine Hunter, University of Winnipeg English professor and murder mystery buff. This time around, Hunter has created a delectable confection of ironic humour and a sensitive heart.”
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“This is an elegant little novel built on the Chinese legend that those who die violently remain in spirit in the place of death until their life's business is completed. In Wendy Li's case, that means drifting about Winnipeg attempting to prove that her husband's mistress, Evelyn, murdered her.
But being a ghost is more difficult than one suspects. Wendy's husband, Alika, seems too deadened with grief to realize she's about. Alika's mother, a psychic, seems suddenly blind, and his sister is afraid of spirits. The detective investigating the crime has problems of his own, and Wendy fears that she will end up as a cold case, drifting about Portage and Main for eternity. Then there's a question about just what did happen. How much does a ghost know? Is what she thinks is the truth actually the truth?
In the First Early Days of My Death proves to be well written and clever, as Wendy and her former family move through the parallel worlds of her death and their lives.”
“Reserve a spot on your New Year's reading list for Catherine Hunter's latest novel. With two thrillers, three collections of poetry and one spoken word recording already behind her, this Winnipeg author continues to reveal the scope of her rich talent.
In the First Early Days of My Death is not easily categorized. Found in the mystery section of bookstores, this diminutive novel can be enjoyed on several levels.
On the surface it works well as a mystery. Wendy Li is a young Winnipeg librarian. She realizes she is dead when she finds herself floating among her loved ones, receiving neither acknowledgment nor recognition.
She comes to the conclusion that she has been murdered by Evelyn, her husband's jealous ex-girlfriend. Wendy hovers on the fringes of the astral plane, frustrated at her inability to help her Earth-bound friends and relatives to see to it that Evelyn is brought to justice.
The premise bears a passing resemblance to Alice Sebold's current bestseller The Lovely Bones, whose murdered heroine narrates the novel from heaven. A tantalizing sub-plot involves a widely unpopular casino project and high-level corruption at city hall. The mayor is as addicted to power as his wife Louise is to gambling. To support his habit, the mayor ignores his wife.
To support her habit, Louise has an affair with one of the casino investors. She trades insider information for money to play the slots. The pace is good, although the action contains less of the spookiness of Hunter's previous suspense novels.
The current novel is at its most intriguing at deeper levels. On the spiritual one, it is a soothing glimpse into the transition between life and death, providing a hint of how one might view the world as one is leaving it. It is a calming reassurance that we are all redeemable, and if one's beliefs permit, recyclable. Sections of the book devoted to Wendy in her altered state are beautifully rendered:
" I rose above the silver maple and looked down upon its crown," she writes. "I had never seen it for what it truly was‹a giant being, rooted to the planet, rustling and breathing."
Not surprising from the pen of a poet, this novel is rife with symbols. Placed on the eyelids of the dead in some cultures, and buried with the dead in other, coins are scattered throughout the novel as symbolic of the material world.
Every morning Felix, the detective, consults the I Ching. He tosses three coins for enlightenment, making choices by the way they fall. Evelyn is haunted by the ghost of her dead brother who, in life, made coins vanish with a magic kit. Louise, who can't keep coins from disappearing, seeks anonymity at every turn. But it is her face, recognized in a video [sic] shot of an anti-casino rally, that finally leads detectives to solve Wendy's case.
Wendy, who spent her life seeking belonging, dies because of a momentous decision to stay home from the rally to take care of her family. She now realizes she has always been the centre of the universe for the people who really count.
When readers reach the last page, perhaps they can decide: Is it chance that coincidence, the last word in the book, begins with "coin"?”
“I had originally intended to write about Catherine Hunter’s mystery book set in Wolseley as the second post in my series on Winnipeg neighbourhoods through crime fiction. What neighbourhood revels more in its stereotypes and is riper for parody than Granola Heights, after all. Hunter certainly has some fun in The Dead of Midnight (2001), as members of a Wolseley book club are bumped off one by one, by means outlined in the series of mystery books the club has been reading.
But then I got a summer cold and spent a weekend on the couch, reading two other crime novels by Hunter. And I realized that although St. Boniface figures in both Where Shadows Burn (1999) and The First Early Days of My Death (2002), these three novels taken together do not fit into my neat little neighbourhood frame, nor are they very similar to each other. It’s as if they were written by three different writers. When you realize that she is best known as a poet, you begin to see that Hunter is using crime fiction to explore themes that are also threaded through her poetry.
Where Shadows Burn, was her first kick at crime fiction, and it is paranoia-inducing. By the climactic scene at the end of the book, the reader doesn’t trust any of the characters, including the lead character. That’s quite a trick. There is a ripping, hammer and tongs finish. Along the way Hunter uses the Orpheus and Eurydice myth to give a deeper resonance to themes of grief, loss, and regret. The story unfolds while a production of Hamlet is in its design and rehearsal stages, and this, besides giving theatre fans an interesting look backstage, adds the theme of inexorable revenge to the soup.
The image of a person floating above the world occurs both in the poetry and in the novels. In The First Early Days of My Death, a character floats above Winnipeg, descending to haunt the people she thinks have murdered her and desperately trying to alert her loved ones as to the identity of the guilty party. There is a dreamy, surreal quality to the writing, much like those paintings of Chagall, where two lovers, totally taken up with each other, float lazily above villages and farms. Winnipeg, in this book, appears as, “the exact, geographical centre of coincidence,” where the Assiniboine and Red rivers, having an entire continent in which to avoid running into each other, nevertheless do collide, making Winnipeg a place where other unlikely events can happen, too.
I haven’t yet read Hunter’s fourth, and so far last, crime novel, Queen of Diamonds (2006), but since its main character is a medium, Hunter once again seems to be testing that, perhaps, porous barrier between the living and the dead.
Catherine Hunter teaches English at the University of Winnipeg and has published four poetry collections. Of these, Latent Heat won the Manitoba Book of the Year award in 1999. She has also recorded Rush Hour, a spoken word cd.”
Read the full review at Portage and Slain.
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