Fifth Business

I finally got around to reading this book having purchased it a few years ago. I attempted to read it twice and then put it away for another day. This time I read the book. I was so intrigued in the beginning and then after a while the main character really started to annoy me. I thought to myself, "by the end I am surely going to despise this book". Instead I loved it. Dunstan can be a bit annoying.....but I think that's the purpose of the story. I think we are supposed to get a little tired of Dunstan and the way he thinks and views life and the people in it. To that very end.....oh, it's just brilliant.

I've read Fifth Business five or six times over a 22-year period, and the older I become, the more it speaks to me. I think it's because Davies writes with a mature wisdom that is so rare these days that it's astonishing to find. The narrator, Dunstan Ramsay, tells a spellbinding story as he assesses the impact of a snowball fight that irrevocably changes intertwining lives. Every time I've picked up this book, I've read it straight through; my copy is dog-eared. Apparently, Davies started writing novels in the second half of his life, after (and these are Davies's own words paraphrased) he'd grown up, after he'd realized that someday he was going to die, and after he'd found out that without God life lacks an important and much-needed component.

Fifth Business is one of the finest books in Canadian literature that I have had the pleasure of reading. Robertson Davies is a literary genius - the sophisticated manner in which he writes, the brilliant plot of his story, his excellent characterization, and all of the other elements that make Fifth Business an engaging, mesmerizing Canadian classic. Fifth Business is a challenging, thought-provoking novel that will compel you to read on until the very last page. Do yourself a favour and read Fifth Business; it will be a novel you won't regret reading.

Fifth Business, the first installment of the Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy, is without doubt the best novel that I had never heard of. Davies prose and narrative voice rival Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited in elegance, humor, and style. And his characters and plot development, so rich, absorbing, and at once triumphant and tragic, put this fine novel in the same class as Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. The term 'Fifth Business', as Davies describes, refers to the role in an opera, usually played by a man, which has no opposite of the other sex. While only a supporting character, he is essential to the plot, for he often knows the secret of the hero's birth, or comes to the assistance of the heroine when all seems lost, or may even be the cause of someone's death. In this novel, Dunstan Ramsay plays this role, and he is in maginificent form. Though he narrates the novel, and is intimately entwined in the lives of all its characters, he somehow manages to remain slightly in the background as a passive observer of others. It is through his eyes that we witness the rise of Boy Staunton, his childhood friend from the small Canadian town of Deptford. While Dunny goes off to the war where he is seriously wounded, and later becomes a boarding school master and expert on the history of saints, Boy makes his fortune in the sugar business and eventually pursues a career in politics. Dunny, whose soft-spoken charm, honesty, and self-reflection become clear through his narration, serves as an admirable foil to Boy, whose drive and ambition are unrestrained by a sense of morality, duty, or altruism. But the novel is far more complex than a simple study of two contrasting characters. Davies' cast is rich and diverse, and their lives intertwine fluidly, though often in surprising ways. There is Mrs. Dempster, who in the opening pages is struck by a snowball thrown by Boy and intended for Dunny, and is rendered "simple" after the subsequent premature birth of her son Paul. Paul runs away from home at a young age, but reappears later in the novel in a key role. And Liesl, the magician's manager, a strong-willed and sexually aggressive woman, hardened by life but wise in the ways of the world, proves to be an admirable rival for Dunny as astute observer of others. Narrated in the form of a letter to Dunny's headmaster, the novel maintains a strong sense of plain honesty throughout. It is a remarkable novel, and a shock that Davies has remained relatively obscure in this country.

I had never heard of Robertson Davies until I discovered "Fifth Business", the first instalment of the "Deptford Trilogy", from a recommended book list and what a great reading experience it turned out to be. Davies writes in a style highly reminiscent of the great late 19th and early 20th century writers. Strongly narrative, the novel is richly multilayered in its exploration of ideas and themes. At its most basic level, it is the story of the sensitive but oddly passive Dunstan Ramsey, the novel's protaganist, whose life is contrasted with his pragmatic and successful friend, Boy Staunton and his women (including Leola, his wife who turns out not to be made of the same stuff as Boy). Whilst Dunstan seems content to live life as a school master, observing rather than participating, Boy makes waves and becomes a hugely successful figure in business and politics. But more fascinating is the early traces of "magical realism" used by Davies in the Mary Dempster (the "fool-saint") episode, which manifests the nature of Dunstan's conscience (contrasting with the lack thereof in Boy) as well as his belief in the power of magic and imagination. In the development of this secondary plot line, Davies employs a technique that hints at "magical realism" but wields his craft with such confidence and aplomb that the effect can only be described as dazzling. Dunstan's feeling of responsibility towards Mary and her son Paul is brought to a beautiful conclusion when he learns much later after Paul runs away from home and assumes the identity of a magician that it was he (Dunstan) who had taught him (Paul) the rudiments of magic through the card game. The shock ending for Boy smacks of poetic justice, leaving the question metaphysically open ended. Boy may be the protaganist on the world's stage and Dunstan only "fifth business", but who's ultimately the more valuable human being ? Davies has written a brilliant and enchanting novel. For sure I'll be checking out the next two instalments of his trilogy.