Fifth Business

Rating:
Summary: Honest eccentricity!
Review: A youth's discovery of stage magic, combined his Scots-Ontario upbringing of prudery, hypocrisy and prejudice make for a fascinating life-path. The characters are internally consistent and sharply defined. These eccentrics cannot abide each others' quirks. As the expression goes, "Something's gotta give," and that something is disclosed from the beginning.
Like a fine Persian rug, it is complex and well executed. *Everything* ties in to a perfect ending, just at the right time.

Rating:
Summary: The best book I had never heard of
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The Finest
Review: I first read Fifth Business as a course requirement in college 25 years ago. To this day, that very same copy sits on my bookshelf, dog-eared and well worn. This is truely one of the finest books I have ever read and I recommend it most whole-heartedly. Robertson Davies was short-listed for the Nobel Prize in 1986 and when you read Fifth Business I'm sure you will understand why.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing Spectacular
Review: I wonder why so many people give it 5 stars as there is nothing spectacular in the book. First of all, the plot starts out well but quickly collasped into nonsense after the first chapter. It is simply weird and unconvincing for Ramsey to write a whole book (over 200 pages) to the Headmaster as a response to a two-page articule. ( I wonder whether the Headmaster is going to read that lengthy thing!) There are too many trivial things and characters and unnecessary details (such as the mentioning of many unknown books and authors) that tend to annoy the reader. Even worse was the religious content, which, you know, if you have read enough Voltaire and Kierkegaard and Nietszche you will find his religious analyses superficial. It is supposed to be a satire, but you will find Davie makes jokes that are not really funny. ( I'd say Voltaire's Candide is ten times more successful as a satire than Fifth Business.) Overall, I find the book too long ( there are many sections that could be deleted and the flow of the story wouldn't be affected ) and simply boring, for unlike masters such as J. Conrad and R.L. Steveson, Robertson Davies failed to give his book an exciting and attractive plot. Davies was over-praised. And if he regarded as the best Canadian author, it would be Canada's shame.

Rating:
Summary: The Finest
Review: Merciful heavens, what a novel!! The implications of a thrown stone-loaded snowball is the basis of this book, and indeed an entire trilogy. From this simple premise comes one of the most profound and multi-layered stories that I have come across. Magically brilliant. Dunstan Ramsey is the narative voice of the book and is a nicely fleshed out character. Ramsey is moved by his unfounded guilt because of his part in the fateful snowball toss. His guilt and dedication is nicely played against the carelessness of Boy Stanton. A very thoughtful novel. Truly a great and important work.

Rating:
Summary: FIFTH BUSINESS cornerstone of Great Canadian Trilogy
Review: No one has yet written the Great Canadian Novel, but in Fifth Business, World of Wonders and the Manticore, Robertson Davies may have given us something like the Great Interlinked Canadian Trilogy.

Fifth Business is the novel with which to start. The book's central figure is schoolteacher Dunstan Ramsay, who grew up in the tiny village of Deptford in the sugar-beet growing district of Southwestern Ontario. The town's pretty boy-slash-bully Percy Boyd Staunton hits the minister's wife with a snowball containing a rock, which causes her to go into premature labor and give birth to the underweight Paul Dempster. (This is an early 20th Century level of obstetrics, you understand.)

The rest of the book is a fascinating weave of Canadian social and political history from the 1910s thru the 1960s as Dunstan, Paul and Percy Boyd (now the raffish "Boy") Staunton are pushed together by the whims of fate. Boy and Paul become world famous in very different ways. Not bad for two kids from the sticks and Dunstan, the humble schoolteacher, has reason to envy them. Or does he? A "fifth business" is theater talk for a leavener, a kind of enzyme agent that, while not significant in itself, makes other things happen.

As the amazon-dot-com reviewer from Singapore so brilliantly pointed out, the novel contains elements of magical realism. Don't confuse Fifth Business with your basic American sprawling bestseller. This is heady yet subtle stuff. Not for nothing is Fifth Business required reading in Grade 13 of the Ontario public school system. (Yes, Grade THIRTEEN--no wonder Canadian kids are so smart.)

I would recommend you buy the paperback Fifth Business/World of Wonders/Manticore trilogy. It only costs a little more than buying Fifth Business by itself, and more than likely you'll want to read the other books once you've finished Fifth Business.

Rating:
Summary: Great Beginning for the Trilogy
Review: Robertson Davies' Fifth Business is the beginning of a trilogy that has become legendary in Canadian literary life. It took moving to America for me to finally begin these novels and I am glad that I have done so. This first book begins the series of novels off on a strong note. Dunstan Ramsay weaves a wonderful narrative as he explores the life lived below the surface of this staid history professor at a boys' school. The novel moves through geography and chronology as the various people in his life become twice born, dropping one identity and taking another (demonstrated by the creation of a new name). Things are never quite so simple as the past lives come crashing in at odd times into their new lives. It is a wonderfully magical and mystical (in many senses) journey and will be a delight to the reader. I look forward to the other two books in the Deptford trilogy.

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.

Rating:
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."

Rating:
Summary: A reader's read
Review: This novel is a triple threat - it has excellent characterization, an intriguing story, and the ability to stick in your mind long after you've finisihed it. Davies is my new favorite writer; his books exemplify the reasons many of us love reading.