Eleven Reader's Club discussion

15 views
Fifth Business Analysis

Comments Showing 1-1 of 1 (1 new)    post a comment »
dateUp arrow    newest »

message 1: by Niroesan (new)

Niroesan Manochandran | 2 comments Fifth Business
Fifth Business Analysis

Fifth Business – What does it mean? How does it relate to the story? All these questions and more are answered very clearly as you read this book. I chose this book at the start because of the cover title I saw, I know you should never judge a book by it’s cover but I do despite the rules. Robertson Davies was one of Canada’s best-known and most popular authors, in my opinion he has a very interesting method of telling a story and he is very fluent with his plot. The meaning of “Fifth Business” is a character within a story/play that does not play the hero nor heroine, the protagonist nor antagonist but rather the one who carries the twist in a plot. At first you may not realize why this serves any significance in the story, but soon as you come towards the end of the story it starts to all make sense. That is another reason why anyone should read this book, you are confused at first in purposely created scenarios throughout the book until the author thinks it’s time for you to know. I think all Canadians/Newcomers should read this book because; it displays a lot of places that you could easily find within Toronto such as; University of Toronto, Deptford and much more. It also talks about situations/problems that Canadians have faced such as; The Great Depression and Influenza to more common day situations like; fights with parents, love, sex and of course friendship. Friendship plays a big role in this story as it’s constantly being broken and re-built but at the end fifth business is what takes over everything. What I mean by that is at the end the character you least expect to die and be killed by is killed and by the least expected as well. That is another reason why I liked this book, the suspense and the literal page after page thrill! I loved this book from the start to the finish line and I’m sure you would say the same. It has anything and everything that a Canadian or just a regular human being would look for; personal and real world connections, common day situations, a dynamic twist, violence, sex, and of course a little dark humour. The Deptford Trilogy has won great recognition for it’s narrative voice and use of character. It consists of three books, the first one being First Business, the second one being The Manticore and the last one being World of Wonders. I have personally only read the first but after reading such a great book, I will definitely look into reading the next two books in the summer time. This book is also a Semi Autobiography. It consists of events and situations Davies has been through and lived although some events are purely fictional. Davies writes the whole book in first person which I thought was very interesting as I’m not very familiar with a lot of books being written in First person, so when I read this, it made me really feel connected with the character and I’m sure any reader would have that same feeling. To be honest I don’t think just anyone would be able to read this because, it has some difficult/extensive vocabulary and some phrases/comments made in this book would not be easily understood by, say an immigrant from Sri Lanka opposed to an immigrant from France. It has a lot of real world events and real life situations and I feel that’s the most people would relate to, events they can picture and relate to. So if you are in search of a book in the summer and you are those people who expect a good book the first time you look, you can definitely look into the series, “The Deptford Trilogy.” Where each book is written in a different perspective, so you know it won’t get boring or predictable. This book will easily be finished in about two days if you really wanted to or a couple of weeks if you really don’t have the time. Whatever the case, you will definitely benefit and enjoy this book. Whether you are a Canadian born citizen or a newcomer, you might have trouble with understanding the language as you would with any book but the story and plot is all one language just like a smile…


back to top