Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
November 24th 2006 05:33
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
Roberston Davies was nominated for Bookers prize exactly once in his long career and he did not win but he is routinely selected to the sundry "my favorite author or book" lists more than any other Booker winner. He has produced many novels and many volumes of criticism but his Deptford trilogy is supposed to be his best work.
I read the trilogy in reverse which meant that the first novel is what I read last. Inevitably, since I already knew what happened later, Fifth Business seemed kind of stale to me. But it is in this novel that the main conflict is set, which Davies re-visits again from different perspectives in the other two novels.
The main protagonists are Dunstable Ramsay, a school teacher who is the narrator of Fifth Business, Boy Staunton, his lifelong enemy and friend, Magnus Eisengriem, a charismatic magician and Liesl, the mistress they share in common.
When Dunstable is 10 years old, he and Staunton have a quarrel one day which ends up in Staunton thowing a snowball at him with a stone hidden in it. The snowball hits the head of Mary Dempster, a pregnant wife of a minister, causing her son Paul to be born prematurely. It is this event that provides the hook for all their lives.
Ramsay is filled with contrition at this event for Mary slowly descends into madness. He holds a soft spot for her lifelong and comes to think of her as a saint during his World War experience; something which leads him to study saints professionally. He becomes a schoolmaster and ends up teaching Staunton's own son. Staunton meanwhile has become a very rich man and most of the novel is a sort of Kane and Abel kind of showdown between them, though it is always told from Ramsay's perspective.
The mood darkens when a charismatic magician called Magnus enters the scene. It is not long before that Ramsay realises that Magnus is Paul Dempster, the lost son of his patron saint. But he is supicious that Magnus harbours some malevolent project and the novel ends with the suggestion of Boy Staunton's imminent murder. This strange murder underpins the later two novels; Ramsay is sure that Magnus has had a hand in it while Magnus is non-commital.
It is clear that Fifth Business is just an introductory preamble for the other two novels and this was especially clear to me because I had read the other two. And it didn't help that both The Manticore and World of Wonders had more rivetting action packed in them and more juicy detail too.
It is frequently said that you can read these three novels in any order but its better to read Fifth Business first, or else it would be spoiled for you, like it was for me.
The whole trilogy is filled with obscure but fascinating details of Bollandists and operattas of post-War England, made all the more enjoyable because Davies hits a pitch perfect narrative voice in this series; something he failed to repeat ever again.
For a work which is modelled on Jungian pscyhology, I must say that Davies manages to preserve the mask of a cultivated man of culture with a sophisticated sense of humour who just barely dissents with the mainstream thought quiet well in this trilogy. When it slips off as in his Cornish trilogy, the results are diagreeable.
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