The Cunning Man

Robertson Davies' "The Cunning Man" purports to be the Diary or Case Book of a doctor--Jonathan Hullah--who moves from the wilderness of Sioux Lookout to Toronto, Canada. But it is much more than that. It turns into what the narrator, Hullah, says he wants to avoid, a Bildungsroman or Novel of Development: in this case the development of Hullah's character, but also the development of Toronto and Canada itself, from a wild-and-wooly backwoods place to an cosmopolitan, but very quirky, society. The cast of characters is brilliant. Hullah himself is interesting, if a little stuffy. But Pansy Todhunter, one of "The Ladies," whose letters he quotes in full, is a wonderful offset: slangy, funny, malicious, hearfelt. Charlie his never-quite-holy priest friend is fabulous: tormented and visionary and fanatical and sad. Mrs. Smoke, the cranky Indian shamaness who saves the 8-year-old Jonathan by magic spells and awakens him to The Other. Darcy Dwyer, the aesthete banker who opens him to music and the visual arts, but also ruthless inquiry and even espionage. Lt. Commander Daubigny, the high-school teacher with a multi-national and even cannibalistic past. Even Esme, the relentless young reporter with whom Hullah becomes, shockingly, smitten. All are wonderful in themselves, yet emblematic of larger elements of a changing society. Instructive, thoughtful, funny. A wonderful read.

This is a very clever piece of work indeed. It starts well, it improves as it goes along and it ties the numerous threads together superbly well, all except one that is obviously intended to hang loose - where was Esme when Conor was murdered? The writing is beautiful, the character-drawing is highly convincing as well as extremely original, but above all this novel is a ballet of ideas. It was written right at the end of Robertson Davies's longish life, and it sometimes reads as if he is trying to cram as many of his thoughts about life in general as he can into 400-500 last pages. If that gives an impression of pretentiousness or of solemnity, I'd say that I was inclined to suspect that kind of thing near the start of the book. The 6th-form debates among the schoolboys and their teachers are extraordinarily articulate and mature, and indeed throughout the whole story the level of intellectual perceptiveness and verbal coherence displayed by not only the main narrator but by more or less everyone else as well requires a little suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader. This is just the style of the book, the name of the game, so suspend disbelief and get on with enjoying it I say. There is plenty to enjoy. The narrator's insights are neither laboured nor obscure but genuinely perceptive and original, and sometimes very funny too, such as Wilde's love that dares not speak its name now evolved, in this enlightened era, into the love that never knows when to shut up. The main thread is the narrator's own life and his observations of others' attempts at lives, and the interpretation he places on it all, partly just from the cast of mind he was born with, partly from the imprint left on him by various traumatic and other formative experiences. The chief subsidiary thread is religion, intertwined with and offsetting the main theme. The narrator is not without a personal interest in the kind of religion that comes his way, but this is Christianity either with a difference or at least showing a side we don't often notice - what might almost be called Trollope red in tooth and claw. My own feeling is that no particular attack on religion generally or on Christianity specifically is being made, but rather that there is a none-too-subtle message here for those inclined to take religion literally. Who or what rules the world and human existence is not something either narrator or author chooses to take a firm view about, and both settle for `Ananke' - Necessity. The narrator, and by obvious implication his (literary) creator are maybe too clever by half at times, but Ananke is not mocked and there is a sad but delightful little touch of irony at the end at the narrator's expense, given a characteristic further twist when one asks oneself the question that I suggested in the first paragraph of this notice. Indeed I ought to say that the sudden twists and turns in the plot are among the most striking and effective features of the narrative. This

I have read all Robertson Davies' novels, including this his last and pity everyone who hasn't discovered him yet. He redefines how much a novel can give, and no one else can touch him. In this novel, we meet a doctor (Hullah) who has some of Davies' own breadth of knowledge and wisdom. Unlike Davies his approach to life is not readily discernible to his circle of friends and patients. This casebook and confessional diary and notebook bares his soul for the reader and along the way illuminates the possibilities of an holistic medicine. Enjoy!

Davies creates the types of Characters who have a firm head on their shoulders but still belong somewhere on the throne of Olympus. his "supermen" are just something else. it is the type of life a doctor would like to live forever.mystical,practical and coyful. the book is a dream to be decrypted by the reader.

Nobody who has not discovered Robertson Davies could possibly understand the almost fanatical devotion of his fans. As one reviewer put it, he is the kind of writer who makes you pester your friends to read him, so that they may share the joy. The Cunning Man was Davies's last novel and, as might be expected, he ended his life with a bravura piece of literary virtuosity. Like his central character, Dr Jonathan Hullah, Davies is a wise old man, looking back on what must have been an extraordinary life, sharing some of the delights and vexations with his audience. Sometimes sad, sometimes hilariously funny (try the annual bad breath competition - if you don't laugh you are probably certifiably dead), always accomplished and almost obscenely knowledgable, this is one of the most satisfying books you are likely to read in some time.