Robertson Davies’ “Fifth Business”

[vent_de_la_mer]

Robertson Davies’ “Fifth Business” is a great book, one of the best I ever read. What I enjoyed the most was the realistic part of it: the protagonist‘s childhood, youth, his environment and people around him. As for all the existential reflections about Saints, I found them misplaced, boring and I tended to skip them. But it turns out that for many readers it’s the Saints’ part which matters the most.

So, Davies described the real life in all its beauty, sadness, complexity, and contradiction, but added some extra stuff about quasi-religious reflections. It’s like a good cake decorated with birthday candles — and people seemed to appreciate the candles more than the cake itself...