Deptford Trilogy #3

Note: The book reviewed below is the last entry in a trilogy, familiar to readers of a certain age, not so much to people born in the Eighties or after. The second book is The Manticore. If Destiny impels somebody to donate it to a used book sale, I will read the first book, Fifth Business. Davies must have liked the trilogy format, since he wrote one (The Salterton) before Deptford and one (The Cornish) after. 

World of Wonders – Robertson Davies

This novel tells the story about how a child kidnapped by a cheap carnie survives abduction, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, lack of education and exploitation amounting to slavery to become a world-famous illusionist.

Davies takes risks concerning the narrative. The illusionist, marvelous but not at all nice, tells his strange story in long monologues. Really long monologues shot with observations from the romanticism of the old time English theater to train travel across Canada in the Thirties. The other narrative device is the copious notes taken by a friend of the illusionist, who reports the commentary of the listeners about the long long monologues.

To balance the talky format, the story is strange enough to keep the reader interested. Davies inserts information about out-of-the-way knowledge and skills that will interest avid readers who like to know a little about a lot of things. All the characters talk in the same fluent, clever way, in mini-TED talks. They hold forth on sundry curious topics, such that the reader wonders if Davies was mining lecture notes or a commonplace book. To name only a couple learned points, references are made to Robert-Houdin’s autobiography and Spengler’s Decline of the West. Doubtless, Davies was a hardcore reader like us.

Davies touches on heady themes, such as truth and the reliability of memory - how people themselves remember what happened, and in what versions the same events were preserved in the memory of other people who witnessed the same events. Ever a moralist, Davies explores the freedom of choice and how strongly external circumstances influence our ethical decisions or avoidance of them. Davies has characters explore the idea that every action counts. That is, every action will help or hurt. Everything we do or don’t makes on an impression on ourselves, on other people, on life itself. So we had better be careful because expiating transgressions may turn out to be more than we can handle.

I don't usually read like a picky pedant, but three factual goofs bugged me. One, apes don’t have tails; one of the carnie characters is an orangutan, a kind of ape; Davies gives the orangutan a tail. Two, the teen years are a time of growth spurts but Davies gives no indication that a growing teenager had increasing trouble fitting into the small space in which he had to work. Three, Davies refers to the “hard, bright light of Northern countries.” Well, in Regina, Saskatchewan, in spring I can only say “I’ll believe you, I’ve never been there” but the summer light is soft and watery in Riga, Helsinki, and St. Petersburg, where I have been in May. Look at paintings by Finnish impressionists, they captured that light.