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Summary: Fifth Business, while not literature's best, is a good book
Review: The complaints do have some force - this book is slow in development, and the plot lacks excitement or even high suspense. But anyone looking for a thriller should read Tom Clancy. This book grips you in a different way. It gives you a respect for life and forces you to review your own life; and in a totally different way than say, As I Lay Dying. The book works on your subconscious, it achieves its effect without demanding scrutinous analysis.This book does what every good book should do. It changes your life
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Summary: Novels like this are why I keep searching for new authors...
Review: The enthusiasm of my fellow amateur reviewers is well placed. This is great literature, great story in the tradition of all the great masters - but it is Dickens' name that leaps to the forefront of any comparisons. Robertson Davies reads widely and makes use of it. The recurrent theme exploring the nature of saints provides a nice mythical context from which the main story can draw its power. Davies deserves a wider fame than he currently has; I am hopeful that in the future his fame will grow.
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Summary: Multi-layerd, haunting tale
Review: The first book of the acclaimed Deptford Trilogy. Davies is a great Dickens scholar, and the vast scope, sprawling structure, and eccentric, wonderful characterizations of this novel make that clear. This book is richly layered and really a brilliant tour de force in that the richness and technical accomplishment, the tight prose and excellent dialogue, never get in the way of what is really a cracking good tale.
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Summary: Davies' Deptford Trilogy - A MUST-read
Review: The only bad thing about Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy (FIFTH BUSINESS, THE MANTICORE, WORLD OF WONDERS) is that it had to end! Sparklingly clever, bawdy, poignant, erudite, and laugh-out-loud funny, Davies entertains in a wonderfully rich, old-world style. A friend of mine (who recommended the books, and to whom I will be forever grateful) put it this way: "Reading Robertson Davies is like sitting in a plush, wood-paneled library--in a large leather chair with a glass of excellent brandy and a crackling fire--and being captivated with a fabulous tale spun by a wonderful raconteur."
Rating: 
Summary: A disappointment
Review: The story has a very intriguing and promising start, but goes downhill after that. It is barely readable in the end. Mr. Davies should have followed the promising start and focus on Mrs. Dempster as a fool-saint. Rather he sprawls and branches out into narcissitic nonsense and sheer contrivances (meeting Paul twice by pure chance? In two different continents? For no useful purpose other than showing off the author's knowledge of conjuring and magic? Come on!) My first exposure to Mr. Davies was the Rebel Angels. I thought it an excellent and tightly written book. The next in the Cornish Trilogy, What's bred in the bones, was a significant step down. And Fifth Business sealed my judgment of Mr. Davies as a severely flawed writer, despite his talents. He seems to love trivias too much to think clearly what makes sense to a story and the reader. In spite of his erudition, he doesn't seem to have deep philosophical insight or position to move the reader to deep thinking. He is limited in character building (other than the slightly anti-social, eccentric types), especially so in the treatment of female characters. His narrative voice is not rich (three flavors, cynic, pedantic, and sentimental) All in all, a minor talent who has a larger-than-deserved reputation. I am disappointed.
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Summary: Literary magic
Review: There are a thousand reviews on Amazon saying "this is the best book I've ever read", so they're easy to pass off as hyperbole, but do yourself a favor and read this book. This is great literature, and although I am pleased to find a lot of reviews here saying that it is required reading in many literature classes, this is a book that inspires more than academic analysis - approach it with a sense of wonder and you will be amply rewarded.
I first read "Fifth Business" around 1970, and I've been telling people for over thirty years that I've never read anything to compare to it. At the time everyone was touting "The French Lieutenant's Woman" for it's "magical realism", but that was a cold read compared to "Fifth Business." This book transports you. You will find it hard to leave the world of Dunstan Ramsey when you finish this book.
The rest of the "Deptford Trilogy" is very good (though I found "World of Wonders" far superior to "The Manticore"), but if Davies had never written another word after "Fifth Business" his literary reputation would have been assured.
After spending all those years claiming that this book is the best novel of the second half of the 20th centiry, I felt an obligation to pick it up again as the year 2000 rolled around, since it had been several years since I last read it. I was not disappointed - despite being so familiar with the book, I was unable to put it down, and read far into the night before finishing.
Do yourself a favor and visit the world of Dunstan Ramsey - those who don't are the poorer for it.
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Summary: WOW!!
Review: This book is definitely one of the best I've ever read. The plot is stunning, mature, unique, and sophisticated. I couldn't put the book down!! The characters were wonderfully contrived, and the way Davies wove them into one plot was beautifully done. It was amusing at times too, and interesting to see how Dunstan Ramsay and his friends matured.
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Summary: ART IN WORDS
Review: this book was great,so powerful the words sting your eyes, a superlative book. A meticulous and astonishing vivid creation of one man's journey from a kind of hell into a life among whited skinned aristocratic men into a kind of pleading dream. A graceful and moving memoir. if you will. poignant recollection, lyrical and evocative. more than a record of unusual events, it shows how in a matter of survival, the courageous reffusal to abandon the fifth as it truely and always will be. the reader is left in awe of the bravery, endurance and solidarity of which humans are capable, as well as the brutality, evil and devisiveness they can inflict.
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Summary: Decent Canadian fiction
Review: This is a very typical Canadian novel, set in the first half of the 20th century. The protagonist, Dunstan Ramsay, is born in a small Ontario town where he experiences the sort of the village politics that have since become a thing of the past (the social differences between different Christian denominations dominates the scene). Dunstan undergoes several major turning points in his life. The first and probably most important is World War 1 (1914-1918), an event that was definitive in the formation of Canadian identity. Dunstan then becomes a teacher and leads a rather uneventful life. Some of themes explored in the book are spirituality vs. materialism, psychology and religion. The first theme is evident in the interaction between Dunstan and his lifelong friend, Boy Staunton. Boy is a successful businessman who succeeds at everything he tries but has little time or inclination for spiritual matters. Dunstan, meanwhile, teaches at a high school his whole life and writes books about saints. Dunstan finds intellectual stimulation and meaning in the inner life. Psychology is explored using Jungian symbolism (Carl Justav Jung 1875-1961, Swiss-German psychologist) and Sigmund Freud's ideas, (1856-1939, Austrian, founder of psychology). Their ideas about the unconscious, both individual and collective, are seen throughout the book. The preoccupation of with psychology of religion in the book is very telling of the late 20th century. The characters are more concerned with their emotions, "mental health" and the like rather than whether finding out if beliefs are true. The depiction of agnostics/atheists in the novel is very realistic; the characters mumble something about reason or rationality and then proceed to ridicule the believer. Granted this sort of behavior is limited to those people who believe atheism because it is fashionable and thought to be intellectual, it is still well done. Another major theme is that of religion and magic; are they the same? Do the differences really matter? One of Dunstan's favorite sayings is that the Bible and Arabian Nights are very similar; this is not explained though. I got the impression that Davies is saying that both of them are simply amusing, meaningful stories with no objective basis or that the value of both of them is in their psychological truths. Paul Dempster, whose premature birth is caused by Dunstan and Boy, renames himself Magnus Eisengrim and becomes a magician of international renown. Overall, I found the novel interesting although its approach to matters of religion is tiresome. After all, if one's beliefs are false then it does not matter how useful or satisfying you find them, for they are nothing but a fiction. The struggle for identity in the novel is very Canadian, for we are always trying to define ourselves other than to say, "We're not Americans."
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Summary: tremendous depth and breadth
Review: This is one terrific book (and only the first of the trilogy). Unlike the reviewer below who advised to read it in small segments, I couldn't put it down and read it in two sittings. From the riveting beginning when a snowball (spiked by a rock) hits Mrs. Dempster, the plot branches out to cover many interesting characters in the small town of Deptford in Canada. As you get to know the strange childhoods of Paul Dempster (born prematurely thanks to the snowball's strike on his mother), the local rich kid and a myriad of others, all seen through the eyes of our narrator Dunsten Ramsey, you'll find yourself hooked. The trilogy is structured around one basic question: Who killed Boy Staunton. You'll be amazed to find out how you could be riveted for the entire 800+pages of the trilogy as layers upon layers give way to the answer. Davies is a great writer and this book is an amazing yarn spun over this page turning trilogy.
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