Book 46, Leaven of Malice (1954) – Leaven of Malice
“The following announcement appeared in the Salterton Evening Bellman: ‘Professor and Mrs Walter Vambrace are pleased to announce the engagement of their daughter, Pearl Veronica, to Solomon Bridgetower Esq, son of…’. Although the malice that prompted this false engagement notice was aimed at three people only – Solly Bridgetower, Pearl Vambrace, and Gloster Ridley, the anxiety-ridden local newspaper editor – before the leaven of malice had ceased to work it had changed permanently, for good or ill, the lives of many citizens of Salterton. This is the second novel in The Salterton Trilogy (which also includes Tempest-Tost and A Mixture of Frailties)”

Other useful links:
the Wikipedia entry for Leaven of Malice

My thoughts:
Brilliant. Funny. Poignant even at times. Robertson takes us back to Salterton some four years after Tempest-Tost, where someone has placed a false engagement notice about Pearl Vambrace and Solomon Bridgetower in the paper. Professor Vambrace is outraged, thinking that the mysterious ‘X’ did it as an insult to him. When he doesn’t get the apology he wants from Gloster Ridley, the Bellman’s editor, he decides to sue for libel. Everyone in town seems to be affected by the hubbub created and we get to eavesdrop upon conversation after conversation (accompanied by Davies’ delightful and witty commentary) as the overlapping ripples spread out and reflect back on each other. All of the characters are human and flawed, but Davies loves them anyway and we do too. With the dean’s speech on malice at the climax, Davies takes another step toward the mythical and philosophical atmosphere of his later trilogies.

Book 38, Tempest-Tost (1951) – Robertson Davies
This is the first novel of Robertson Davies, set in the fictional city of Salterton (a stand-in for Kingston, Ontario). In this comedy of manners, various characters come together to put on a Little Theatre production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest but some have ulterior motives and other agendas on their minds.

Other useful links:
the Wikipedia entry for Robertson Davies

My thoughts:
Reviewing this book on its own merits is a bit difficult. Throughout the entire reading experience, I couldn’t help but evaluate it with Davies’ later works in mind, as the precursor of the Deptford and Cornish trilogies (I have yet to read either of the Toronto trilogy books). That’s always a danger when you get familiar with an author and their “mature”* work and then go back to read the early stuff.

Looking at it in isolation, I would say it was an enjoyable read with quirky characters and some description of Canadian life in a small Ontario city. There were a few rather humourous episodes and Davies’ wit was to the fore a number of times. This was not a book of either major tragedy or drama (the worst thing that happens, happens to a horse, though there was a point where the novel could have turned very grim indeed), just a glimpse into a community over the course of a couple of months.

Looking at it as the prelude to the rest of Davies’ novels, one can certainly pick out similarities to and differences from the latter. For example, it had the exposition of characters that is so intrinsic to Fifth Business and World of Wonders, but not to the same degree. It had a short description of Hector’s background and childhood that was reminiscent of the more thorough treatment given to Francis Cornish in What’s Bred in the Bone. From the prominent place of allusion in the Robertson Davies novels I’ve read (e.g. Paracelsus in Rebel Angels and Arthurian myth in The Lyre of Orpheus), I was expecting a similar exploration of The Tempest, but didn’t get it. The play itself hardly figured at all.

*It seems a bit odd to characterise anything produced by Davies as anything other than mature–was he ever a young man??

Book 26, World of Wonders (1975) – Robertson Davies
From the publisher:
“Hailed by the Washington Post Book World as “a modern classic,” Robertson Davies’s acclaimed Deptford Trilogy is a glittering, fantastical, cunningly contrived series of novels, around which a mysterious death is woven. World of Wonders—the third book in the series after The Manticore—follows the story of Magnus Eisengrim—the most illustrious magician of his age—who is spirited away from his home by a member of a traveling sideshow, the Wanless World of Wonders. After honing his skills and becoming better known, Magnus unfurls his life’s courageous and adventurous tale in this third and final volume of a spectacular, soaring work.”

Other useful links:
the Wikipedia article on World of Wonders
the Wikipedia article on the Deptford Trilogy
the Wikipedia article on Robertson Davies
the Wikipedia article on Robert-Houdin

My thoughts:
Again, I started this book with some misgivings. I’m one of those people who hate clowns and carnival sideshows and I was afraid that this book would be too much in a setting I couldn’t stand. Sigh. I ought to have known better by now & trusted Mr Davies not to disappoint. I loved this book too, and yes, I read it all in one sitting some months ago, and am only now getting around to blogging about it.

We’re presented with another framed story, first the old comfortable shoes of Dunstan Ramsay, then the autobiography of Magnus Eisengrim né Paul Dempster. We finally find out what happened to the third boy affected by that fateful stone in the snowball. Davies is such a great storyteller, you’re drawn in right away and he takes you on a trip through all the elements that made Dempster into Eisengrim but he doesn’t stop there. Like Nicholas Nickleby, World of Wonders is populated with a great cast of actors, and of course Liesl. Oh yeah, and what was it the Brazen Head said about the death of Boy Staunton? We find that out too…

Book 24, The Manticore (1972) – Robertson Davies
From the publisher:
“Hailed by the Washington Post Book World as ‘a modern classic,’ Robertson Davies’s acclaimed Deptford Trilogy is a glittering, fantastical, cunningly contrived series of novels, around which a mysterious death is woven. The Manticore—the second book in the series after Fifth Business—follows David Staunton, a man pleased with his success but haunted by his relationship with his larger-than-life father. As he seeks help through therapy, he encounters a wonderful cast of characters who help connect him to his past and the death of his father.”

Other useful links:
the Wikipedia article on The Manticore
the Wikipedia article on the Deptford Trilogy
the Wikipedia article on Robertson Davies
the Wikipedia article on Jungian psychology

My thoughts:
I originally zoomed through this novel, reading it in one sitting. I really loved it, but of course, didn’t journal it or blog about it right away. So now I’m trying to do that seven (!) months later. I was ever my intention to read the whole trilogy through again and maybe I’ll have to do that to give a halfway decent ‘review’. But I’ll try to recall my initial thoughts as I look back over the novel (it’s been so long I barely have any solid impressions about the plot). I remember that before I started, I was a little reluctant to read about someone’s psychoanalysis and moreover, was a little disappointed that the book was about David instead of Boy Staunton. But in the end I was far from disappointed! It was fascinating hearing about the Staunton family and some of the events of Fifth Business from David’s point of view. This is the kind of book that draws one in and doesn’t let go until the end, which is remarkable for a story without a lot of plot, but rather a lot of biography. Davies is a master at this technique (found in both of the other books of the trilogy, Fifth Business and World of Wonders). The warped childhood, the early love gone awry, further insights about Canadian identity (especially her colonial British identity) are all played out yet again with different tonal emphases. I especially loved the story of Maria Ann Dymock:

Now, the cream of the story is this. Maria Ann Dymock must have been a girl of some character, for she bore the child in the local workhouse and in due time marched off to church to have it christened. ‘What shall I name the child?’ said parson. ‘Albert Henry,’ said Maria Ann. So it was done. ‘And the father’s name?’ said parson; ‘shall I say Dymock?’ ‘No,’ said Maria Ann, ‘say Staunton, because it’s said by landlord the whole place could be his father, and I want him to carry his father’s name.’
[...] But my dear Davey, you’re missing the marvel of it; what a story! Think of Maria Ann’s resource and courage! Did she slink away and hide herself in London with her bastard child, gradually sinking to the basest forms of prostitution while little Albert Henry became a thief and a pimp? No! She was of the stuff of which the great New World has been forged! She stood up on her feet and demanded to be recognized as an individual, with inalienable rights! She braved the vicar, and George Applesquire, and all of public opinion. And then she went off to carve out a glorious life in what were then, my dear chap, still the colonies and not the great self-governing sisterhood of the Commonwealth! She was there when Canada became a Dominion! She may have been among the cheering crowds who hailed that moment in Montreal or Ottawa or wherever it was! You’re not grasping the thing at all.
[...] Just a very rough shot at something the College of Heralds would laugh at, but I couldn’t help myself. The description in our lingo would be ‘Gules within a bordure wavy or, the Angel of the Annunciation bearing in her dexter hand a sailing-ship of three masts and in her sinister hand an apple.’ In other words, there’s Mary the Angel with the ship she went to Canada on, and a good old Gloucester cider apple, on a red background with a wiggly golden border around the shield. Sorry about the wavy border; it means bastardy, but you don’t have to tell everybody. Then here’s the crest: ‘a fox statant guardant within his jaws a sugar cane, all proper.’ It’s the Staunton crest, but slightly changed for your purposes, and the sugar cane says where you got your lolly from, which good heraldry often does. The motto, you see, is De forte egressa est dulcedo—‘Out of the strong came forth sweetness’
—from the Book of Judges, and couldn’t be neater, really. And look here—you see I’ve given the fox a rather saucy privy member, just as a hint at your father’s prowess in that direction. How do you like it?

I also liked the epilogue bit, meaning the part at the end with Liesl and the cave.