Date: 2008-06-30 18:04 Subject: Fifth Business by Davies Security: Public Tags: canada, highly_recommended, loss_of_faith_2008, re-read, robertson_davies

Fifth Business (1970)
by Robertson Davies
273 pages - Penguin Books

'Fifth Business' is a term (according to Davies) in opera or theatre which refers to a character that is neither hero or heroine, confidante or villain, but is still integral to the plot. In this case that role is played by Dunstan Ramsay, who is relating his experiences, but finds himself a supporting character in his own life story.

Dunstan Ramsay is born in the early twentieth century in a small Ontario town, and as a child he has an experience that will affect him the rest of his life: his lifelong friend and enemy Boy Staunton throws a snowball at him, but Dunstan ducks and the snowball hits the pregnant Mrs. Dempster instead, which leads to the premature birth of Paul Dempster. It's an event that haunts Dunstan with guilt all his life, but also opens up possibilities for all three of Dunstan, Boy, and Paul that wouldn't be there otherwise.

Dunstan goes on to fight in the Great War, and then becomes a teacher at a private school. One of his main interests in life becomes saints and the stories around them, and in fact he believes Mrs. Dempster to be a saint of a kind, and attributes three miracles to her. Dunstan (like the author Davies) is a Protestant, and hence there is some tension in his fascination with saints, as he belongs to a branch of Christianity that still honours the old saints, but doesn't recognize any in the modern age, as if sainthood was something that had gone out of style, or as if God had once been present in the world but has now departed.

The book follows Dunstan's life until he's about sixty years old. I find it hard to relate the quality of this book, but it is very good, and is not only Davies' best, but could quite easily be considered the greatest Canadian novel ever. It stands alone, but it can also be read as the first part in The Deptford Trilogy, which also includes The Manticore and World of Wonders.

'He told us, quietly and in the simplest language, that he had to run his Mission by begging, and that sometimes begging yielded nothing; when this happened he prayed for help, and had never been refused what he needed; the blankets, or more often the food, would appear somehow, often late in the day, and more often than not, left on the steps of the Mission by anonymous donors. Now, pompous young ass that I was, I was quite prepared to believe that St John Bosco could pull off this trick when he appealed to Heaven on behalf of his boys; I was even persuaded that it might have happened a few times to Dr Barnardo, of whom the story was also told. But I was far too much a Canadian, deeply if unconsciously convinced of the inferiority of my own country and its people, to think it could happen in Toronto, to a man I could see.' (pg.128)