Synopsis:
Fearful of her husband’s sexual advances, a young mother falls into a spectacular case of hysteria–that might not be all in her head.
Review:
Angelica is yet another neo-Gothic tale, set in a Victorian England conjured more from literature than from history. It has all of the elements you’d want: repressed sexuality, midnight visions, hysteria and a spiritualist, all rendered in gorgeous, sumptuous prose from four different points of view. Continue reading
Synopsis:
A legendary folk hero tells the first part of his life story, encompassing his early years as a vagabond and his time spent at University studying alchemy and magic.
Review:
It’s not for nothing that The Name of the Wind has been touted as a great fantasy debut. It absolutely is. I am leery of beginning fantasy series that have not been concluded, but my brother was so enthusiastic about this one that I had to check it out. Patrick Rothfuss’s writing has a confidence that makes me reasonably sure that he’s got the whole story worked out. And being that the story is told in the first person–this isn’t a sprawling, multi-character epic–it shouldn’t be that daunting of a tale to complete. Continue reading
Synopsis:
The last of a dying breed, a proper English butler reflects on his life in service.
Review:
I had no idea I would love The Remains of the Day as much as I did. To be honest, I love Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go so much that I was afraid that if I didn’t like this book, my love for that one would be tainted irrevocably. Continue reading
Synopsis:
The premature baby of Fifth Business was kidnapped by roustabouts, grew up a circus performer, and has grown into the greatest magician in the world. His life story offers the final piece to the question posed in The Manticore: “Who killed Boy Staunton?”
Review:
Robertson Davies’s masterful Deptford Trilogy deserves to be on more must-read lists. I discovered it thanks to Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose, and can say that Davies’s writing not only warrants Prose’s close reading, it actually provokes it in the reader. Davies intimately marries story and language with sorcery worthy of his creation, the famed illusionist Magnus Eisengrim of World of Wonders, fooling you into believing you’re reading a simple story simply told, when in fact, over three books, Davies has pulled off epic spectacle through linguistic pyrotechnics. The works are that well hidden; the machine that skillfully crafted. There’s nothing obviously showy about his writing, yet the overall effect is more explosive than fireworks.
On an emotional level, the Deptford trilogy is exceedingly masculine, to the point where I can’t say I exactly connected with the characters and their journey. Of all the stories Davies tells, however, I was most enthralled by Magnus’s accounts of growing up among a traveling band of vaudevillians and circus folk. It’s such a fascinating world, particularly as Deptford doesn’t shy away from portraying its seamier side. And young Magnus, kidnapped and spirited away, is in a wonderfully rich predicament. Knowing what we know of his parents from Fifth Business, his account is infused by the specter of double tragedy. You can’t help but imagine what would have been if he hadn’t gone to the circus that day.
In each book, Davies employs a conceit to justify why the story is being told; positing a teller and an audience. In Fifth Business, it was Dunstan Ramsay’s attempt to write a hagiography of Magnus’s mother, whom he believed to be saintly in her feeble-mindedness. In The Manticore, he had Boy Staunton’s grown son enter Jungian analysis to tell his tale. In World of Wonders, Magnus’s tale is coaxed from him by Jurgen Lind, a great Swedish filmmaker who has cast Magnus to play Houdini in a biopic for the BBC. When Magnus mentioned that there is always a gap between autobiography and the truth, Lind seizes upon this notion. In lieu of Houdini’s truth, he will use Magnus’s truth to create the subtext that will give his film depth and truth.
As Magnus unfolds his tale, the tension between the telling and the truth grows ever more apparent, and it turns out that Davies is in fact interrogating the very structure he’s chosen for each of the three books. At one point, the characters debate point-of-view in art as it relates to truth. Liesl, the erstwhile lover of both Magnus and Dunstan says,
“Which man’s life are you talking about?” she said. “That’s another of the problems of biography and autobiography, Ingestree, my dear. It can’t be managed except by casting one person as the star of the drama, and arranging everybody else as supporting players. Look at what politicians write about themselves! Churchill and Hitler and all the rest of them seem suddenly to be secondary figures surrounding Sir Numskull Poop, who is always in the limelight…
This business of the death of Willard: if we listen to Magnus we take it for granted that Magnus killed Willard after painfully humiliating him for quite a long time. The tragedy of Willard’s death is the spirit in which Faustus LeGrand [alias Magnus] regarded it. But isn’t Willard somebody, too? As Willard lay dying, who did he think was the star of the scene? Not Magnus, I’ll bet you. And look at it from God’s point of view, or if that strains you uncomfortably, suppose that you have to make a movie of the life and death of Willard. You need Magnus, but he is not the star. He is the necessary agent who brings Willard to the end. Everybody’s life is his Passion…
Herein lies the crux of the Deptford Trilogy. History is subjective; yet subjectivity is really all we have. Not even a great filmmaker like Lind can create God’s point of view; as his cinematographer puts it, it’s all just a trick of the light. But I don’t get the sense that Davies is a relativist, or that this notion provokes despair. In World of Wonders, Davies gives his most disempowered protagonist an audience who fights with him, refuting him and even despising him, and that’s where hope and ultimately truth emerge.
Synopsis:
One man’s harrowing journey up the Congo in search of enlightenment.
Review:
Blogging really wasn’t invented for talking about a book like Heart of Darkness. I am utterly incapable of coming up with anything approaching an instant reaction to this book. I need to sit with it for a long time, then read it again, then sit with it some more, then read it again. Then maybe I can talk about it. I promise to let you know if I come up with anything approaching a coherent thought about this tremendous work.
Synopsis:
Life inside a 1970s TB ward from the point of view of a teenage girl who won’t take her treatment lying down.
Review:
A View from a Kite is a superlative young adult book, featuring a fresh, likable protagonist in an utterly fascinating setting. Gwen is 17 and has tuberculosis, so she lives in a sanatarium where her only responsibilities are to rest, eat, and heal. She lives amongst patients of all ages, and one of the great treats of this book comes from watching Gwen interact with her substitute family. Gwen’s own biological family has been fractured by violence–her father dead, and her mother living in a twilight world of her own–but she’s not one to move on and forget, as evidenced by the way she treasures her dementia-stricken Aunt Edith on the few visits she’s allowed home. Continue reading
Synopsis:
A young man with severe amnesia comes to realize that he is being stalked by a conceptual shark (which is much, much scarier than you might think).
Review:
What surprised me most about The Raw Shark Texts was how fast it moved. For all its high-minded metaphysical aims and experimental underpinnings, the book has the pacing of an airport thriller or Stephen King horror book. There were some sequences in this book, such as protagonist Second Eric’s Sanderson encounter with Nobody, that were are frightening as anything I’ve ever read. Continue reading
Synopsis:
A small boy deals with the death of his mother by setting his imagination free.
Review:
Up High in the Trees is a beautifully written book about a most engaging child, but it failed to move me. I’m not really sure why. Sebby, his brother Leo, his sister Cass, and his father are all dealing with a grievous loss, each choosing to isolate themselves in a different way. The overall story shows a family splitting apart then coming back together because of the choices that Sebby makes. Continue reading
Synopsis:
A new house in a suburban Atlanta neighborhood spells disaster for all its inhabitants.
Review:
It’s awfully hard to be frightened when you’re sitting on a rooftop deck in West Hollywood, letting the setting sun dry your bathing suit after discovering that you can float like a cork in the saltwater pool. Continue reading
Synopsis:
Schoolteacher Dunstan Ramsay looks back over his life, intertwined with that of a childhood friend and inextricably linked with a madwoman he desperately wants to believe is a saint.
Review:
I had no idea what I was in for when I began Fifth Business, the first book in Canadian novelist Robertson Davies’s Deptford trilogy. I have an older paperback and the copy on the back just says, “the story of a rational man who discovers that the marvelous is only another aspect of the real.” As a one-sentence description, it’s just as vague as the one that I provided, because this book refuses to be categorized or summed up neatly. Continue reading
