Trilogía de Deptford

The Deptford Trilogy #1–3

by Robertson Davies

The plot of one of the most highly acclaimed trilogies of the 20th century revolves around the mysterious death of a business magnate. Three characters whose destinies are linked forever after a childhood snowball fight will each offer their own point of view as to who killed Boy Staunton.

 

Alrededor de la misteriosa muerte de un magnate se teje la trama de una de las trilogías novelescas más aclamadas del siglo XX. Tres personajes cuyos destinos quedaron unidos por una pelea infantil con bolas de nieve darán su punto de vista sobre quién mató a Boy Staunton.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Canada, Novels, Classics, Literature, Mystery

1224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

William Robertson Davies, CC, FRSC, FRSL (died in Orangeville, Ontario) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies is sometimes said to have detested. Davies was the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate college at the University of Toronto.

Novels:

The Salterton Trilogy
• Tempest-tost (1951)
• Leaven of Malice (1954)
• A Mixture of Frailties (1958)
The Deptford Trilogy
• Fifth Business (1970)
• The Manticore (1972)
• World of Wonders (1975)
The Cornish Trilogy
• The Rebel Angels (1981)
• What's Bred in the Bone (1985)
• The Lyre of Orpheus (1988)
The Toronto Trilogy (Davies' final, incomplete, trilogy)
• Murther and Walking Spirits (1991)
• The Cunning Man (1994)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertso...

Reviews

[Kinga · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do I even begin this? I spent about two weeks reading this and that's a lot of time for people to be asking: "so what is it about?"
It's usually non-readers who ask such questions because readers know better than to ask what a 800 page book is about. But I thought about it and decided that it was mostly about subjectivity of experience. Not that it made sense to anyone who asked.

It was three books and each one of them a different kind of wonderful. It all starts in a small village of Deptford, Ontario.

Fifth Business was like a better version of Prayer for Owen Meany. There were saints, magic and a lot of symbolism but not as heavy handed as in John Irving’s books. It’s the life story of Dunstan Ramsay, a man who has never played the main character. Even as a narrator he reduces himself to a catalyst needed for certain things to happen. As it is, it as much a story about Dunstan as it is a story about Boy Staunton, his best friend and his enemy. Dunstan is an honest and self-aware narrator but as every first person narrator should be approached with caution. After all, he does specialize in myths and likes to attribute more meaning to things than other people think it’s reasonable.

The Manticore looks on many events from The Fifth Business from a different perspective and through a different medium – Jung style psychoanalysis which Boy Staunton’s son is undergoing. It’s clear that Robertson Davies is a big fan of Jung and weirdly enough this was the book I have read the quickest of all three. Nothing more exciting than uncovering different layers of a person’s psyche. It made me want to embrace and explore my own Shadow, i.e. all that’s nasty about me (like that I am a judgmental bitch).

World of Wonders is when the last missing puzzle of Deptford finds its place. It’s a story about illusions and legends that we like to believe about ourselves. It really explores the theme of the first person narrator, the autobiographer – unreliable by definition. It’s also a very bizarre but beautiful love story, although Davies might be falling in his own Jung trap, because his female characters in all three books are more of Anima archetypes than characters but it’s possible he meant them to be this way as every book is written from a male point of view.

Davies writes the hell out of every sentence. There aren’t any false notes. Its perfection left me amazed and I am afraid my hackneyed review won’t do it justice. I don’t even want to use any of the adjectives the blurb writers have cheapened over decades of book marketing. This review is so vapid it makes me want to cry because all I want to do is to get everyone to read this book.

[Lari Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful trilogy, by an incredible writer. Each of the three novels looks back on a man’s life. The first, Fifth Business, is a letter from a school teacher to his old headmaster, attempting to show that his life was much more than anyone ever saw at school, and it touches on saints, war, madness and artificial legs.
The second book, The Manticore, is notes from the Jungian analysis of a wealthy Canadian lawyer, touching on archetypes, alcoholism, first love and death-masks.
The third, World of Wonders, is the life story of a performer, told to a film crew as they search for a subtext to their film, touching on circuses, kidnapping, clockwork, and a very British theatrical tour.
All three books are linked by Deptford, the home village of two of the men, and also the home village of Boy Staunton, the lawyer’s father, and linked by the death of Boy Staunton under odd circumstances. And each book contains unhappy men powerful in their own ways, and women who are influential but rarely comforting.
However, you don’t have to be interested in saints or Jung or British theatre to love these books. The most notable thing about any Robertson Davies novel is the generous and intelligent spirit which gleams out of them.
Some books make you feel the author’s intellect and learning but also make you very aware of your own lack of learning; these humane erudite books make the reader feel clever too. I didn’t feel patronised as a teenager when I read these, though I am now aware that I must have missed at least 90% of the references! As I reread them every new decade of my life, I get new mythical, religious, literary and historical references every time! I wonder if I will ever live long enough to get every single one of them?
These are fabulous books, by an amazing writer. Please discover him for yourself!

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robertson Davies' The Deptford Trilogy was not my usual cup of warm maple syrup, but from our farcically far-fetched future, a tiny Canadian village at the turn of the Twentieth Century seems at least as exotic as a miles-high Lunar skyscraper surrounded by zeppelins. In other words, Davies' trilogy may not be science fiction, but it is a way to time travel.

The Deptford Trilogy isn't even really a trilogy, though! These books depend so much on each other (I'll return to this) that they blend into a single intimately-interrelated work. That's how I read them, too, in a Penguin omnibus edition, albeit with long breaks for other books in between—in fact, I positively meandered through this book (the way, I fear, I meander through this review—be warned, o ye stranger).

So, without further ado, let's consider the first part of The Deptford Trilogy:


Fifth Business

Davies begins by explaining the title, a theatre term for rôles which are neither "{...}Hero nor Heroine, Confidante nor Villain, but which were nonetheless essential{...}" (from the Epigram by "Tho. Overskou, Den Danske Skueplads," p.9).

Dunstable "Dunstan" Ramsay is just such a fifth. He's a lifelong schoolteacher on the verge of retirement, and a literal hagiographer (his secular works on the lives of the Catholic saints are best-sellers, at least among the sort of folks who buy such things), whose narrative is suffused with outrage as he tries to justify a life maligned by a scurrilous reporter.

Not that Ramsay thinks he's perfect—early on, he calls himself

A selfish, envious, cankered wretch.
—p.120

Ramsay has learned a few things along the way, though, and even had some brushes with fame. Upon meeting the King of England, for example, to receive the Victoria Cross for heroism in battle, Ramsay reflects,

Ever since, I have tried to think charitably of people in prominent positions of one kind or another; we cast them in roles, and it is only right to consider them as players, without trying to discredit them with knowledge of their off-stage life—unless they drag it into the middle of the stage themselves.
—p.91

*

As one might expect, the town of Deptford plays a major rôle in Davies' trilogy. As I often say about my own home town, it's "a good place to be from."

Through the eyes of Deptford's barber Milo Papple, Davies lays out the town's depravities, as well as the devastation wreaked by the "Spanish Flu" (last century's pandemic), in just a page or two:

"Young kids in trouble a lot. And Jerry Cullen—you remember him?—sent to the penitentiary. His daugher squealed on him. Said he was always at her. She was just a kid, mind you. But the cream of it was, I don't think Jerry ever really knew what he done wrong. I think he thought everybody was like that. He was always kinda stupid."
—Milo Papple, pp.108-109.

And then two bastards, a juicy self-induced abortion, several jiltings, an old maid gone foolish in menopause, and a goitre of such proportions as to make all previous local goitres seem like warts{...}
—Ramsay, p.109

"The flu beat everything, though. Spanish Influenza, they called it, but I always figured it was worked up by the Huns some ways. Jeez, this burg was like the Valley of the Shadda for weeks."
—Milo, p.109

Ramsay leaves Deptford again, this time voluntarily:

{...}I boarded the train—there was no crowd at the station this time—and left Deptford in the flesh. It was not for a long time that I recognized that I never wholly left it in the spirit.
—p.111

*

Fifth Business is often overtly sexual, though never really explicit. Ramsay can't resist giving his lovers terrible punning nicknames, like "Agnes Day," "Gloria Mundy" and "Libby Doe" (p.122), and Davies devotes a whole chapter, complete with mythologically-allusive title, to Boy Staunton taunting Ramsay and his wife Leola with his nude photos of her, an experience that's especially excruciating—for Ramsay—since Leola is Ramsay's "One Who Got Away." Leola's feelings about the matter, of course, remain secondary.

It isn't all sex and mind games, of course. There's much more to chew on here (and much more to spit out).

Ramsay's encounter with a born-again preacher seems illuminating, for example:

"You educated people, you have a craze for what you call truth, by which you mean police-court facts. These people get their noses rubbed in such facts all day and every day, and they don't want to hear them from me."
"So you provide romance," I said.
"I provide something that strengthens faith, Mr. Ramsay, as well as I can. I am not a gifted speaker or a man of education, and often my stories come out thin and old, and I suppose unbelievable to a man like you. These people don't hold me on oath, and they're not stupid either. They know my poor try at a parable from hard fact."
—Joel Surgeon and Dunstan Ramsay, pp.136-137

As are Ramsay's ruminations on Boy's rich friends:

I never saw much evidence of straight thinking among these ca-pittle-ists, but I came to the conclusion that they were reaping where they had sown, and that what they had sown was not, as they believed, hard work and great personal sacrifice but talent—a rather rare talent, a talent that nobody, even its possessors, likes to recognize as a talent and therefore not available to everybody who cares to sweat for it—the talent for manipulating money.
—p.171

It seemed to me they knew less about the ordinary fellow than I did, for I had fought in the war as an ordinary fellow myself, and most of these men had been officers. I had seen the ordinary fellow's heroism and also his villainy, his tenderness and also his unthinking cruelty, but I had never seen in him much capacity to devise or carry out a coherent, thoughtful, long-range plan; he was just as much the victim of his emotions as were these rich wiseacres. Where shall wisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding?
—p.171

And this, later on:

They were untouched by modern education, but their government was striving with might and main to procure this inestimable benefit for them; anticlericalism and American bustle would soon free them from belief in miracles and holy likenesses. But where, I ask myself, will mercy and divine compassion come from then? Or are such things necessary to people who are well fed and know the wonders that lie concealed in an atom? I don't regret economic and educational advance; I just wonder how much we shall have to pay for it, and in what coin.
—p.203

I saw the end of Fifth Business coming, but not long before I was supposed to, I think.


The Manticore

The Deptford Trilogy's next chapter is told by Edward David Staunton, son of Dunstan Ramsay's childhood companion Boy Staunton. If you've just read Fifth Business, you'll recognize these names right off the bat. If not... well, it's probably better to go read the first book; The Manticore is very much a middle third, depending on the first and setting up the last. It ends with no conclusion, only a determination.

David is a product of Deptford, as much as Dunstan Ramsay or his eternally-youthful father... but he is also a successful lawyer and a child of privilege, so when he's blindsided by a personal crisis, his natural response is to jet off to Switzerland, where he can obtain the best in Jüngian psychoanalysis.

"You know, you can go for a lifetime without sex and come to no special harm. Hundreds of people do so. But you go for a day without food and the matter becomes imperative."
—Dr. Jo von Haller, p.335

David's discomfort with women in general, and as professionals in particular, is plain from the start, despite all his protests to the contrary. Yet his appointments with Dr. von Haller give him an excuse to talk—to confess—to just such a professional woman, and he proceeds to do so at great length. Almost all of The Deptford Trilogy's second installment consists of David talking to Dr. von Haller—which makes The Manticore much less interesting than its predecessor.

The Manticore also spends too much time rehashing parts of Fifth Business from other viewpoints, some of which are pretty terrible—on p.357, during the carnival that took the town preacher's young son Paul Dempster away from Deptford, we see the town enjoying a dunking booth enticing customers to hit the... hit the whom, now?

Trust me; you don't wanna know.

*

Robertson Davies was great at characterization; David's blind spots are often apparent to us before they are to him:

When people talk about 'leadership quality' I often think of Bill Unsworth; he had it. And like many people who have it, he could make you do things you didn't want to do by a kind of cunning urgency. We were ashamed before him.
—p.421

To his credit, David quickly realizes that something's wrong with this idea. A page or so later, he tells Dr. von Haller,

I was against people like Bill Unsworth, or who were possessed as he was. I was against whatever it was that possessed him, and I thought the law was my best way of making my opposition effective.
—p.423

Elsewhere, David shows at least the start of wisdom. Though he "had a row" with his priestly mentor Father Knopwood, David took it to heart when

{...}he talked about the corrupting power of great wealth and the illusion it created in its possessor that he could manipulate people, and the dreadful truth that there were a great many people whom he undoubtedly could manipulate, so that the illusion was never seriously challenged. He talked about the illusion wealth creates that its possessor is of a different clay from that of common men. He talked about the adulation great wealth attracts from people to whom worldly success is the only measure of worth. Wealth bred and fostered illusion and illusion brought corruption. That was his theme.
—p.453

I'm passing over another spicy passage: David's first sexual intercourse with Myrrha, a delightful older woman if decidedly a minor character—though this is also where Dr. von Haller tells David for just what (or rather whom) the Manticore is a metaphor.

Dr. von Haller is no minor character; she gets some of the best lines:

"Don't you know what fanaticism is? It is overcompensation for doubt."
—p.462

And this one could even be The Manticore's motto:

"I do not promise happiness, and I don't know what it is. You New World people are, what is the word, hipped on the idea of happiness, as if it were a constant and measurable thing, and settled and excused everything. If it is anything at all it is a by-product of other conditions of life, and some people whose lives do not appear to be at all enviable, or indeed admirable, are happy. Forget about happiness."
—p.505

Dr. von Haller isn't the only perceptive woman David meets in Switzerland, either:

"You don't know whether or not you're a hero, and you're bloody well determined not to find out, because you're scared of the burden if you are and scared of the certainty if you're not."
—Dr. Liselotte (Liesl) Naegeli, p.534

We'll see much more of Liesl in World of Wonders, by the way.

David Staunton's sojourn in Switzerland eventually loops back to Deptford, setting up the conclusion of the trilogy:


World of Wonders

Dunstan Ramsay is again narrator for The Deptford Trilogy's finale. In this one, Ramsay focuses on Paul Dempster, another Deptford lad who left as a boy for reasons which (as revealed in Chapter 4) are shocking but not at all surprising. Like Ramsay, Paul returns to Deptford, but not 'til much later, after utterly reinventing himself as Magnus Eisengrim, the great stage magician and star of a biographical film about Houdini.

At this point it's even clearer that this is a trilogy in name only; The Deptford Trilogy is really a single massive entity. I'm glad again that I read this in an omnibus edition.

Ramsay's interviews with Eisengrim and other artists in Liesl's Swiss castle form the bulk of World of Wonders. And while many passages reflect bygone attitudes, when a protagonist could unselfconsciously call someone "a fatty" (p.592), others remain evergreen:

"Boredom and stupidity and patriotism, especially when combined, are three of the greatest evils of the world we live in."
—Eisengrim, p.625

—or—

"An infant is a seed. Is it an oak seed or a cabbage seed? Who knows? All mothers think their children are oaks, but the world never lacks for cabbages."
—Ramsay, p.631

Eisengrim's views, as one might expect from his travels and history, are relatively enlightened, hinting that maybe Davies himself wasn't quite as benighted as his prose often seems. One speech from Eisengrim (that I'm hiding, both because it refers to that revelation in Chapter 4 and because its language—as in many other parts of these books—could be triggering) stood out to me:

I cannot pretend to explain Willard, and I think such people must be rare. I know that homosexuality includes love of all sorts, but in Willard it was just a perverse drive, untouched by affection or any concern at all, except for himself.
—pp.637-638

I'll let Liesl have the penultimate bon mot:

"Most adolescents are destructive, I suppose, but the worst are certainly those who justify what they do with a half-baked understanding of somebody's philosophy."
—Liesl, p.832

Not without reason, though, does World of Wonders conclude The Deptford Trilogy with this single exclamation:

"Egoist!"
—p.864

The Deptford Trilogy was a long meal indeed, laid on the table a long while ago. Without a doubt, a lot of it's gone off in the meantime... but even so there's still much meat to chew, right up to its final course.

[Karen· · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr Davies is the Magus, the Magician. I'm sure this must be at least the third time that I've read Fifth Business, and it never palls. He has such an ease and breadth of narration, such elegance and gentle irony. You relax into this kind of authoritative voice, luxuriate in its reassuring comfort. And all the while the magic spell silently twists into position, so that you swallow the most unlikely of coincidences, the slightly one-sided female figures, the rather too obvious a contrast between Dunstan and his materialist counterpart, Boyd Staunton, the odd idea of Dunstan writing such a long letter to his headmaster. None of that matters. It flies, a magic carpet ride about guilt, responsibility and recognizing all the parts of your personality, the rational and the irrational. Deeply satisfying.

[ES · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read most of this book under the shadow of Cortez's Cathedral in Mexico sitting by a pool and smoking really bad pot.

Anyways, somebody I barely know suggested it. I'm glad he did...it got me through a tough time. Took my mind to another place when it was in another place to begin with.

Something quaint and imaginative about the way he writes, like a master storyteller with no other agenda than the story at hand.

[Kevin Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where has this trilogy been all my life?! It took me decades to read this. And I ate it up in days. Outstanding storytelling. And a book(s) I would recommend forever.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that I've owned for years, and finally got around to reading. It works far better than it should, especially the final third, which is a series of monologues by the principals -- flying in the face of the old writer's adage to show, not tell. My wife recalls that my college GF was a fan, both of this book and of Davies.

Here's my GR friend Alan's fine and detailed review, which is the one you should read:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
-- complete with telling quotes! Thanks, Alan. Just as he says, it may be labelled as a trilogy, but it's really just a long and very absorbing single novel. High marks from me, too.
And you may want to start with Kinga's review, which is a bit less overwhelming than Alan's:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

GR almost lost this review, a good reminder to always, always save an offline copy!

[W.D. Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's not much of a spoiler to tell you that the last sentence of this trilogy is a one-word exclamation: "Egoist!". I mention this to introduce my (probably highly unoriginal, but I have not as of yet read any criticism of RD's work) pet theory that this, second trilogy of Davies is his psychomachia ("soul-war"), in which the author explores the various elements of his own personality and how, by conflicting with each other, indirectly reveal the drama of his own life. Thus, the principal characters in these three books (all of which are obsessed with the World-As-Stage metaphor, by the way) can be said to be contending for the role of lead protagonist, when that part is already reserved, thank you very much, for the author himself.

As one character says to another in the third installment in this series, World of Wonders, there comes a time in some lives when the urge to confess overtakes them, and it is a wise interlocutor who allows himself to be cast in the role of confessor in such a case, for then we can "expect to hear some strange things" out of them (WW 19). In the first novel, Fifth Business, serious-minded scholar Dunstan Ramsay recounts his life of saint-hunting for the headmaster of the school which is celebrating his now-ending pedagogical career. In the second book, The Manticore David Staunton, son of Ramsay's frenemy Boy Staunton, spills all of his beans to a Jungian therapist in Zurich. The closing volume, meanwhile, revolves a round a famous magician's (Magnus Eisengrim, boyhood acquaintance of Ramsay) urge to be telling of his own metamorphosis, that from a callow circus hand and provincial urchin into the great, revered, international showman of his age.

So here we have three possible aspects of Davies' own personality set out for us in a classic Freudian dreamscape, in which condensation and displacement hide the latent spiritual content (I would say psychological, but that would be insulting our august, learned author, who has much to teach us about archetypes, the consanguinity of good and evil, and of truth and illusion) in the surface, manifest storyline: the author, a serious scholar in his own right, pursues the truth ambivalently, both like the dogged historian Ramsay and like the reluctant analysand David Staunton, while he is also, qua novelist, merely a "fine illusionist" like Magnus Eisengrim:

But what is that? A man who depends upon a lot of contraptions—mechanical devices, clockwork, mirrors..."(WW 6)

The final novel has much to say about the mechanics of stagecraft, of course, as we peep inside the making of an illusionist's career and psyche, all of which is itself refracted through the lens of a film crew who are attempting to use Eisengrim's own backstory as a sub-text for a film that they are all making on the life of the 19C French illusionist and watch-maker, Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin.

And so we have rooms-within-rooms reflected in mirrors-within mirrors in these three novels, all of which are artfully plotted in meticulous detail, as a watchmaker might reassemble a delicate, antique timepiece, not merely with patience and skill, but with passion, even love, "coaxing" and "humouring" time-worn mechanisms so as to "re-animate" them, make their "nineteenth century roman[ce]" speak to a later, much more hurried age—so, too does this author "invest these creatures of [a different] metal with so much vitality and charm of action", in a series of novels that, though it finally reveals itself for what it is: a putative World of Wonders which hints at a spiritual existence while nevertheless remaining bound to the earth and constructed out of scraps, of bits, of preterite matter*, nevertheless also thoroughly, unavoidably and even indescribably charms its readers.

This one's a keeper, then (& far more than the sum of its parts!), and one that will keep you thinking and wondering about it, perhaps even with some of that old-fashioned, sublime awe, long after you have put it down.

*e.g. nothing more (or less) magical than a simple, yet unforgiving rock, hidden in a snowball, thrown at Dunstan Ramsay by David Staunton's father Boy Staunton, and which misses its target, which then strikes Magnus Eisengrim's pregnant mother instead, and thereby causes her to give premature birth to a son named Paul Dempster—is just the first, humble, initiating cause of all their journeys in this series of novels, and yet was evidently magic enough for one SuperFan of Robertson Davies', one John Irving, to openly borrow for the key plot point of his own novel, A Prayer For Owen Meaney!.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three volumes of the “Deptford Trilogy” each narrated by a different character by way of some form of memoir.

Fifth Business is narrated by Dunstable (later Dunstan) Ramsay, a schoolteacher who grows up in the fictional Deptford. The novel takes the form of a letter Ramsay writes to the headmaster of the school from which he has just retired, wherein he recalls how, as a boy, he ducked a snowball wrapped around a stone intended for him. The snowball hit a pregnant woman who happened to be passing by; she gave birth prematurely as a result and then goes mad. This incident has affected Ramsay's life, and the novel tells how he comes to terms with his feelings of guilt. Intertwined with his story is the life of Percy Boyd 'Boy' Staunton, Ramsay's boyhood friend who threw the snowball, and who later becomes a wealthy businessman.

The Manticore is the story of Boy Staunton's only son, David. David Staunton undergoes Jungian psychoanalysis in Switzerland. During his therapy (the book is a record of his therapy plus notes he made for his therapy), he tries to understand his father and his relationship to him. The novel is in fact a detailed record of his therapy and his coming to understand his own life.

World of Wonders is the story of Paul Dempster, the son of the woman hit by the snowball, who after initially being abducted by a circus has grown up to be Magnus Eisengrim, a famous magician. Eisengrim is to portray a 19th century magician in a television movie. During lulls in the filming, he recounts his life to various people including Ramsey, including the incredible obstacles he has had to overcome, and elaborates on his career as an actor travelling through Canada in the early 20th century.

To the extent there is a narrative: Ramsey encounters Dempster various times – eventually as Eisengrim and befriends him and his bizarre girlfriend Leisl including ghosting a completely fabricated autobiography. After introducing Eisengrim to Dempster the latter commits suicide the same day with in his mouth the stone his Dad threw at Mrs Dempster which Ramsey had kept as a paper weight. Ramsey is convinced Eisengrim hypnotised Staunton and effectively murdered him but it seems to have been closer to assisted suicide.

Each book centres largely around myth. Ramsey becomes convinced that Mrs Dempster is a saint (especially after a vision he sees of her in WWI) and devotes his private life to the study of saints and the exploration of their role as myths. The Jungian therapists draws on various mythical individuals and roles which in her view emerge when someone repeats their life story and which repeat the earliest human myths. During Dempster’s reminiscences the various present day characters discuss storytelling, the role of autobiography and film as well as the role of myths in magic. Ramsey and Dempster believe firmly in the marvellous and the need to restore a sense of wonder to the world – David Staunton has always had a completely opposite view but finds his legal rationalism challenged by his therapy.

Key related themes are good and evil, truth and illusion, history and identity, the difference between external perception and internal truth (for example Ramsey writes his letter when he realises from his leaving speech that his fellow teachers and ex-pupils see him as a boring character with no life out of school other than a quaint obsession with saints), the contrast between mundane Canadian provincial life and the bizarre worlds of saints and circuses.
Fascinating book verging at many times on the bizarre – although often tedious to read and difficult to follow – the book is effectively a combination of A Prayer for Owen Meany and The Discovery of Heaven although not as good as either.

[Lorenzo Berardi · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the snapshots you can find online, Robertson Davies looked like Charles Darwin with a touch of Santa Claus.

The Canadian author had a long white forked beard that was strikingly demode in the 1970s when he delivered the three books of this excellent Deptford Trilogy.
And yet, don't be fooled by the first appearances. You better look more carefully at the photos of Mr Davies. If you do that, you will perceive genuine wit and an eager inquisitiveness in his eyes as well as the intimidating irony of his slightly raised eyebrows.

This man knew what he did and always kept himself up-to-date with the long times he lived in. If Robertson Davies chose to look from another age deserting the barbershops of Ontario, that was not a sign of personal carelessness but very much a deliberate intellectual disguise.

Davies' old-fashioned long white forked beard had at the same time the gravitas of the British born naturalist and the bonhomie of the popular gift-bearer. And in between Darwin's meticolous but revolutionary cataloguing and classifying specimens and Father Christmas' magic but punctual efficiency in delivering airborne gifts, Robertson Davies' prose might be found.

No surprises that reading "The Deptford Trilogy" to me has been like embarking on the Beagle with a flying open sleigh on the deck ready to take off at the author's call.
Captain Davies led our brig-sloop time-machine through his story with remarkable confidence and ease leaving the Canadian shores behind with the occasional brat throwing a snowball at us from the quay. During our navigation he always had the first and the last word on board and - to his credit - he managed to keep his whole crew of characters under control without neglecting the needs of his only reader and passenger.

We followed a circular route with a stopover between "Fifth Business" and "The Manticore" to welcome on board a new first narrator looking for psychoanalysis. Then, thanks to the flying open sleigh we brought along on the Beagle, we left the poor fellow on the Swiss Alps between Jung and the Jungfrau.
Just in time to begin the exploration of the third stage of our trip leading us to the illusive borders of the "World of Wonders" together with a film troupe and eventually back to Deptford.

Believe me, folks. You will suffer no seasickness sailing (and flying) with Robertson Davies. This guy never loses the control of his helm and - as a plus - is not afraid of pointing straight into the whirlwinds of history, politics, religion and love. That and the difficult art and consequences of dodging a snowball thrown by a brat.
The magical realism and real magic you will bring back home after embarking on a journey on The Deptford Trilogy with Captain Davies are equally haunting.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

FIFTH BUSINESS
==============

This is a good book. It doesn't belong to my favorite class of artistic works, which I think of as the "Fire and Forked Lightning" variety. But it's quite good.

Roberston Davies tells his tale in a slightly detached, leisurely pace that I'm tempted to attribute to his being from Canada. The story certainly doesn't hit you like a hollywood movie plot ride. It's thoughtful and takes it's time, but it's a good story -- basically the entire story of one man's life, with scope and interest and some lovely and truly felt imagery burned into the center of it.

The emotional detachment author -- or the narrator, but the difference here is academic -- is part of the book, but it also renders the tale in less vivid colors than I might have liked. Or, let me say, if the narrator had been closer and more emotional about the tale, it would have been a different sort of story, maybe more in the Austen/Bronte sort of vein. The distance is interesting, it's not just bad. In exchange for the heat and draw of the extremely personal, it asks you to step back and review a life.

Which leads me to the last thing I'd like to say about this book. This book does something that I find quite interesting -- it deals with symbolism and significance as a *subject* in the book, but the story itself is much more realistic. Things that seem meaningful happen, and then instead of allowing that just to be a magic of the fiction, the Davies' picks at them. His characters wonder, investigate, explode, embrace the meanings of their lives, but their lives, like real lives, do not come with this meaning officially sanctioned (Dickens) or condemned (Hardy). Once again -- quiet realism instead of the magic of high drama.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know that is is supposed to be a fantastic trilogy but it really didn't do it for me. Was I too young the first time around? Perhaps. If enough GR friends push me to do so, I'll give it another shot.

[Tyrran · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first thing that came to my mind when I finished this books was "thank God that's over with"

I really enjoyed this book when I started it, but around 1/2 to 3/4 of the way I just wanted it to end, for me that's normally a bad sign because when I love a book I'm almost depressed to finish it.

The book definitely has some clever aspects to it which is easily played upon by Roberston Davies the narration is almost a triptych view of the main characters, But it's heavily based around character subjections and almost feels like I'm reading boring personal diaries who have biased opinions on everything that's said (this inevitably then involves conversations that need 6 characters involved to round out all the subjectivity)

What I found really strange is that the books synopsis makes it sound very involved in "Who killed Boy Staunton?" but I honestly forgot about that perspective of the story and was reminded about it 90% through. This is probably mainly to do with the fact that the book is heavily dense in almost frivolous discussions between characters that don't contribute to anything.

I have another book by Robertson Davies that I wanted to read...I think I might give myself a lot of time before indulging in that one.

The book also reminded me a lot of Paul Auster's book "Mr. Vertigo" rather read that, a much better book.

[Kristen Olsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whenever I mention this book the very few who recognize it ask me if I am Canadian.
No, I am not Canadian.

This book skirts a very fine line between the entirely possible and the gothically surreal. Told in trilogy form the story sprawls in the best possible way. The book is worth reading simply to gain the aquaintance of the narrating character. (I'm not sure I have crushed so hard on a literary figure since Schmendrick the Magician.)
His views and musings are so fresh and well put that I, heaven shrive my soul, broke my own golden rule of no-book-marking to capture and mark numerous passages for return perusal, and return I have.

[Todos Mis Libros · Rating 3 out of 5]

La primera vez que conocí éste libro fue a través de la revista de Circulo de lectores.
Me llamó la atención, ya a simple vista, por su aire "vintage", de modo que decidí ponerme a indagar más sobre él.
Reúne las tres partes de la trilogía: "El quinto en discordia", "Mantícora" y "El mundo de los prodigios".
Yo os hablaré hoy de la primera.

En todos los blogs y páginas que consultaba, solamente encontré elogios y buenas palabras, catalogando la trilogía como "obra maestra" así que me apetecía mucho hacerme con ella, lo malo era el precio. Sí, costaba casi treinta euros, ya sé que son tres libros en uno por lo tanto no salía excesivamente caro, pero me paraba un poco.
Más hacia delante mi paciencia tuvo recompensa porque Círculo lo puso en oferta a casi diez euros y ya no lo pensé mas. Al fin podría constatar por mi misma si la obra era tan sumamente genial como por ahí se comentaba.
Y vamos a ello...

Davies es realmente un maestro, un contador de historias nato, pues logra engancharte a su lectura sin
grandes tramas ni sucesos demasiado reseñables.
Me di cuenta de esto cuando llevaba un buen número de páginas leídas y caí de repente en la cuenta de que la obra tenía muy pocos diálogos. Esto es algo que no suele gustarme y que normalmente hace que una obra me resulte pesada, así que imaginaros la calidad literaria y de estilo que tiene este hombre (mejor dicho tenía) para lograr abstraerte y que no te des cuenta de esta carencia, si la podemos llamar así.

Lo que más me gustó del libro fueron sus dos primeras partes, en las que se narra la infancia y juventud de nuestro protagonista. Pero el último tercio aproximadamente, (cuando cuenta ya con unos cincuenta años) y de ahí en adelante, se me hizo un poco más pesado.

Creo que fue porque las pequeñas cosas que se van contando logran entretenerte, pero hasta cierto punto. Como lectora esperaba que me condujeran hacia alguna sorpresa final o hecho más recalcable de lo que había leído hasta el momento. Pero no, la obra mantiene su ritmo más o menos lineal pero prácticamente carente de giros que nos llamen la atención.

Por lo tanto es una obra para degustar sin prisas, con una buena taza de café. Deleitarnos con su buen estilo pero sin esperar el "novelón" de nuestras vidas.
Creo que con mis palabras se puede adivinar que me gustó, pero esperaba un poco más.
Claro que mis géneros favoritos suelen ser otros, por lo tanto no se le puede "pedir peras al olmo" y es normal que este tipo de lecturas a mi se me puedan quedar un pelín cortas y en cambio a otro tipo de lectores les pueda llenar por completo.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

We have educated ourselves into a world from which wonder, and the fear and dread and splendour and freedom of wonder have been banished. Of course wonder is costly. You couldn't incorporate it into a modern state, because it is the antithesis of the anxiously worshipped security which is what a modern state is asked to give. Wonder is marvellous but it is also cruel, cruel, cruel. It is undemocratic, discriminatory, and pitiless. (Liesl)

Robertson Davies' three-part masterpiece is a sprawling international tale anchored by robust, multifaceted characters that slide in and out of the text like pop-up figures in a children's book. The first volume often sustained my reading fire for many pages at a sitting. Yet there were also those stretches, as often appear in any long work, where my reading gaze slackened and I pined for more compelling prose. In particular the second volume (The Manticore) was a low point (more like 3 stars), at least until toward the end of it when Davey ends his Jungian therapy and meets up with Ramsay (narrator of the first book) and Liesl (the most intriguing character of them all, yet the one whom we hear from the least), but this is rather late in the book and so comprises only a small percentage of its content. The final volume focuses on the conjuror Magnus Eisengrim, of whom my interest in fluctuated throughout the trilogy. Much of his history, narrated by himself to a small group, was fascinating to read, yet grew less so as it progressed. I must say that I experienced a degree of relief when his overblown tale came to a close.

I'd been meaning to read this for years and regrettably I think my taste has now changed to a point where I didn't enjoy it as much as I would have in the past. I fear I've become too jaded in my reading. But it was still just unconventional enough in its telling to keep me interested. I'm glad I read it, if only to know what I would have missed by not reading it. Would I recommend it to others? Yes, in certain cases. Though it certainly falls into the category of realism, it's original enough in both its content and its form to appeal to a pretty wide audience. But would I recommend it to readers who studiously avoid all realist literature in favor of the avant-garde? Probably not, unless I knew the nuances of their reading preferences almost as closely as I know my own.

[Bookspread · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robertson Davies was a big fan of Jungian psychology, so if you enjoy archetypes in literature this will be a true character identification feast. How each narrator perceives the world around them plays also a big part in solving the Mysterious Death that drives the plot, so you get to play the shrink-detective.

The Best:

* The dialogue. Except when Magnus rambles, where it gets a bit stiff.
* The female characters (except for Leola Cruikshanks and Doctor Jo) and the fact the sexiest woman in the trilogy is also the ugliest. Liesl Naegeli, I have a crush on you.
* The personalities presented, which cover the range of human experience, from the lowest emotions to the best impulses.
* The undercurrent of magical realism, which is subtle but sets the novel on fire from the inside.
* Liesl Naegeli’s monstruosly romantic castle in Switzerland.
* Paul Dempster’s metamorphosis into Magnus Eisengrim.

The Worst:

* Boy Staunton’s appalling comments and opinions on everything, from women to religion to child rearing to friendship.
* Boy Staunton’s wives.
* Boy Staunton’s (and later David Staunton’s) housekeeper. What a detestable woman!
* Willard the Pedophile Wizard and his freak show colleagues.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am forever indebted to my friend Donna Durham (Donna, where are you now?) for introducing me to Robertson Davies and The Deptford Trilogy. Some have described these books as examples of magical realism; well, yes, sort of, as written by a Canadian. The trilogy consists of three books: Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders. The books each tell the same story from the point of view of a different character and center around the murder of Percy "Boy" Staunton.

Fifth Business, my favorite, introduces Dunstan Ramsey on the occasion of his retirement from his longtime position as a "public" school teacher. As Ramsey narrates the events of his life, we are introduced to unforgettable characters and the recurring themes of connection and destiny, saints and madness.

The Manticore explores the subconscious of David Staunton, Boy's son, through Jungian psychotherapy. Finally, World of Wonders tells the story of Magnus Eisengrim, a world famous magician whose very existence is tied to the relationship between Ramsey and his "life-long friend and enemy" Boy Staunton.

Unfortunately these books are not available on Kindle; please don't let that deter you!

[Jacob Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would probably give this 5 stars if I was smarter. Counting it as one book because I read it in one volume. I had never read Davies before and thought this was thoroughly worthwhile, even if parts of it certainly went over my head.

There is remarkable depth to this trilogy, which contains many themes, but one part I really enjoyed was the way Davies plays with perception throughout. Each book is presented as different documents: Fifth Business as a letter from a retiring headmaster, The Manticore as mostly therapy notes and journals, and World of Wonders as notes on a series of conversations. These three books go over similar time periods and overlapping events with viewpoints of different characters. Dunstan Ramsay (the headmaster who is the point of view of Fifth Business) is a historian who is concerned with the intersection of myth and truth. By giving us multiple viewpoints of the same time period, Davies shows us how that intersection comes to be. Does the truth matter as much as we say it does? How much of our self image is myth? This really culminates in the demise of Boy Staunton, who could have been killed by any number of people depending on how you read the three books. Davies gives us the hard facts, but the "truth" is built up over lifetimes and hard to explain.

I would also commend Davies for his characters and his remarkable knowledge of various fields, particularly psychology. The Manticore is almost entirely the interactions between a Jungian psychologist and her patient. Mapping out a character's whole life such that it fits in with the rest of the world and then having their psyche so well developed that you believably describe therapy over several hundred pages seems to me a remarkable writing feat.

[Roswitha · Rating 4 out of 5]

The work of some of my favorite Canadian authors – Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Carol Shields – seems to take place in an alternate universe, one that looks similar to the one I inhabit but with a different set of rules.

However, the outlandish stories of Robertson Davies make me feel right at home. And he’s the one who deals most explicitly with Canada as a nationality with its own mythology and creed. But he deals with everything like that, archetypally. He has more in common with Atwood than with Munro, who doesn’t explicitly address the Canada issue, treating the context simply as “reality” and making it all the more bewildering as a result.

Davies is a great explicator of Carl Jung in novel form. His fiction is bundled into trilogies of short novels. Each trilogy is about a different set of characters, but I seem to recall that rural Canada, as bitterly provincial and narrow a place as any American Main Street, is an element in each one, the jumping off place, the foundation. Deptford is Davies’ middle trilogy, and it’s named after the provincial town where the story begins and where the characters manage to embark on interesting, if not outright strange, lives.

The Deptford Trilogy’s trajectory is determined by another trajectory, that of a snowball thrown by a boy named Staunton, one of the winners of Canadian society, and probably the entire western world, given his eventual prominence as a businessman during WW2. The stone he threw and where it struck sets off a series of events that are examined from a different character’s perspective in each novella. In the Fifth Business, Dunstable Ramsay, who was the target of Staunton’s snowball, narrates the story, ending with his own rather self-satisfied and successful perspective on Staunton’s much showier and shallower life. Who is the real hero of this story, Ramsay seems to ask?

The middle book, The Manticore, is narrated by David Staunton, son of the snowball thrower, whom he greatly admires yet can’t love and doesn’t feel loved by. This section takes the form of a classical psychoanalytic conversation between David and his Jungian analyst in Geneva, with long sections of background that connect the parts of the story in an unbroken narrative web. But David Staunton has a question, and only the reader can determine whether or not it was answered.

The last novella in the trilogy, World of Wonders, is ironically and unironically titled and again narrated by Ramsay, but only as a spectator to the remarkable telling of his own life by the magician Magnus Eisengrim (theatrical magic and performance are the context of the third novel), also known as Paul Dempster when he was Ramsay’s childhood friend. This section seems to answer, definitively, the question shouted by David Staunton at the end of Fifth Business.

The Deptford Trilogy is about patterns, about internal structures and how they’re reflected in individual and collective lives. Its careful construction reflects its message but also incorporates its share of random cruelty and unforeseeable twists of fate.

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Deptford trilogy revolves around the mysterious death (was it murder or suicide?) of businessman Boy Staunton; along the way it tells the life stories of Staunton's boyhood friend, Dunstan Ramsay; of Staunton's son, David; and of enigmatic magician Magnus Eisengrim. Though the books are full of Davies' trademark wit and erudition, I found that they didn't work for me as well as the Cornish trilogy or the Salterton trilogy, and the second (especially) and third books didn't live up to Fifth Business. I thought too many of the characters downright unpleasant (and the lack of important female characters irritating), and though the magic and sleight-of-hand theme was interesting, I find I prefer the academic milieu of the other books to the small town and circus settings of these.

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found these to be a strangely smooth, soothing reading experience. Plus, I got to learn about obscure hagiography and Jungian psychoanalysis.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Deptford Trilogy--A Canadian Bulgakov, if you can wrap your head around that--magical, dark, comedic, and mysterious. Robertson Davies deserves to be read and reread and reread.

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bloated for sure but I was into it.

[Emily]

👺

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

My now 81 yr. old father is a misanthropic pack-rat who lives a rich mental life through books while outwardly barely functioning as a decent man. His attic, like his mind, is insulated entirely by books and that is where I discovered Robertson Davies, who I was not expected to understand at age 15. I devoured the trilogy nonetheless and came to understand, if nothing else, the rigidness of sexuality in the first part of the 20th century as well as the religious underpinnings (guilt and an over-active imagination from lack of real sexual awareness). As a "fallen" Catholic, this resonated, not just at 15 but as a twenty-something and thirty-something, rereading the series. I also, thanks in part to Joseph Campbell, came to understand archetypes through Davies' novels, and to discover and somehow maintain a sense of wonder at the world, which we can never truly fully know.
There are only two other people I have met who enjoyed this series, and while that doesn't sound like strong praise, I think it is just that, for these men were of exceptional character. One is a 70+ year old Jewish man in LA who made his fortune writing commercial music but who prefers a solitary, intellectual life—we became fast friends when he saw the book in my bag as we both enjoyed a solitary meal at a cafe. The other is an Irish restauranteur who was born in the wrong generation, marrying a woman not his equal who bore him many children who were raised with one foot in the 1980's and the other in the aughts. Needless to say, there was a strong gender imbalance and the kids were asked to grow up very quickly, to dodge unforgiving furniture in their Victorian house, and to get jobs as soon as it was legal—dynamics that made more sense as I read novels with people and plots hailing from the decades well before the 1950s. Short of reading historical non-fiction, reading Davies does seem to capture the personalities and sentiments of this earlier generation, one to which most of us alive today have no direct line.

[Lara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I reviewed each of the three books in this trilogy as I finished them, but I figured I'd review the series as a whole as well.

I was not looking forward to reading Fifth Business much at all. And, sad to say, it was in large part due to the fact that I hated the first cover I saw of it so much. It's a stupid reason, I know.

Anyway, almost as soon as I opened the thing up, I was competely hooked. Davies has such a way with words. It's not an action-packed book by any stretch of the imagination. It's a quiet, complex story, told gradually, but infused with such a sense of mystery and magic that I really felt like Davies had cast a spell over me. I devoured it and could not wait to read the next book in the series.

In a way, I don't think either of the follow-ups quite match the elegance of the first book, but the second one I loved almost as much, and there are great parts in the third one as well. And in the end, I think it's a really fascinating story beautifully told, and I will admit that I am half in love with the late Robertson Davies. Heh...

Anyway, I am most definitely looking forwarding to reading his other works (I have most of them already purchased and ready and waiting on my bookshelf at home). But I'm going to give this series time to really sink in first.

A+++

[Philip Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the title implies, this book is actually three novels, Fifth Business, The Manticore and World of Wonders. Although the books differ from each other, they are all linked by the trilogy's central premise. How are we accountable for our actions, however trivial, and how far reaching are the consequences of the decisions we make?
Two boys are snowball fighting in a small Canadian town at the turn of the century. One throws a snowball which contains a stone, and misses its target, hitting the pastor's pregnant wife by accident. The blow from the stone precipitates a premature labour, and leaves the pastor's wife incapacitated for the rest of her life.
This one event shadows not only the lives of the two boys, but also the child who is born prematurely. It is a burden they will carry through their lives in various forms, and will shape the pattern of their lives.
The novels are linked, but can be read independently with no loss of enjoyment. While the first novel is entertaining, the second wasn't really to my taste (Jungian philosophy apparently - I'm no wiser now!), but the third novel, World of Wonders is a remarkable piece of fiction, and by far the best part of the trilogy. This book follows the fortunes of the prematurely born Paul Dempster, his kidnapping by a travelling 'freak' show, and his subsequent career in the theatre. It's worth reading the whole trilogy just for this section, and it is this third novel which lifts the books onto a whole new level.

[MVV · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is tough to say but I think I feel a little let down by this trilogy. It came well recommended by people I really respect and the first volume convinced me that I wasn't misled in taking it up. A great panorama of the time and place (and not many wrote about Canada then, just as they don't now or maybe we just don't get to read many). And in that same first volume, we're introduced to these very intriguing characters, a grandiose narrator writing letters to someone else who may never read them and ends with a nice old surprise twist in the tale. Pretty flawless as far as first books in a series go.

What hurts then is how book 2 and 3 let me down completely. It's interesting that each of the three books have a different style owing to, primarily, a different narrator but the tale the subsequent volumes tell just dulls gradually until it becomes a damp squib of a story.

If I look at it objectively, the core of the story is told in the first part and the last few pages of the third, which makes the rest of it seems supremely extraneous and a tremendous waste of page count and time. It's not like the motivations and stories of characters are unraveled smartly; they're just simply enumerated one after painful another and that's what made me feel, by the end, like I were crawling, on my hands and feet, over the finish line of a marathon and half which I'd run for no reason or pleasure.

[Mollie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a tough one to review. I can absolutely appreciate the genius of taking one childhood incident and spinning up a really lengthy story about how it impacts the characters’ lives and shapes who they become. Parts of the story flew by and are so beautifully written. Other sections were just a slog. The main characters are decidedly unlikeable people and at some points I just didn’t much care what happened to them. 3.5 stars for what is an admittedly superbly written trilogy, just one that I only truly enjoyed about 50% of the time.

Rounding down to 3 for the disgustingly creepy pedophile circus magician, yuck.