
Fifth Business
The Deptford Trilogy, Book 1
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Narrateur(s):
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Marc Vietor
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Auteur(s):
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Robertson Davies
À propos de cet audio
Hailed by the Washington Post Book World as "a modern classic", Robertson Davies’ acclaimed Deptford Trilogy is a glittering, fantastical, cunningly contrived series of novels, around which a mysterious death is woven.
This first novel in the trilogy introduces Ramsay, a man who returns from World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross but who is destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As we hear Ramsey tell his story, we begin to realize that, from childhood, he has influenced those around him in a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious way. Even his seemingly innocent involvement in as innocuous an event as throwing a snowball proves to be neither innocent nor innocuous in the end.
©1970 Robertson Davies (P)2011 Audible, Inc.Ce que les critiques en disent
A stunning book, narrated excellently.
Deeply satisfying
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heading
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I enjoyed very much the beginning, but found the middle part with all the saints, to be very long. However the end was good enough for me to want to listen to the next book.
I wonder if the fact that English is not my first language might be a reason for my finding parts of the book too long? I think if I read it in paper, I might have abandoned it.
The reader is terrific.
Saints everywhere
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The protagonist in this book, Dunstan Ramsay, is very close to Davies himself, both of whom grew up in small towns in Southwestern Ontario: an area I know very well. Both are scholars, both were "Masters" of a school/college and both are complex personalities. This particular book is written as a prolonged letter of confession by its protagonist Ramsay to the new headmaster of his school—although it's never completely clear why it's being written. The confession is a curious echo of Catholic practice from its Presbyterian-raised writer (Ramsay). Catholic magic is an important sub-text to this book in which a scholar with a stern Scots core is pulled by forces which are by turns exotic, tempting, repulsive, romantic, imposing or self-imposed.
I listened to this book on my evening walks and was deeply drawn into the story. It has a long narrative arc that runs over some 70 or so years and ends with a surprising event that I confess I didn't see coming. The book is Dickens-like in the remarkable characters who inhabit the story, and the well-formed minor players who come, and go—and re-emerge unexpectedly. Davies has a long fascination with the theatre and there's key elements of that here, at times didactically spelled-out like the Fifth Business nature of Ramsay In the story. The writing turns a shrewd eye to Canadian identity and history, to town and gown, and to hidden sides of the world (at least from a scholar's limited viewpoint) where Saints and Jesuits, magicians and freaks, priests and preachers, and sugar magnates are all players. It's a great ride in a world where a snowball can begin everything.
Marc Vietor does an excellent job of the narration and inhabits the core of Ramsay in convincing form. I could almost persuade myself that he was Canadian; however, a few minor mispronunciations gave it away. For instance the "Red Ensign" flag— it's "en'-sin", Marc, and the "Lieutenant Governor" is the "Leff"-tenant".
An Intricate Masterpiece
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A work of substantial importance
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Pretty Good!
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Vietor's reading brought all of the book's inhabitants to life. All were heard, understood all the more because of his delivery. Because of his reading, people, not just characters lived and celebrated, suffered and died. Vietor enlivened Fifth Business like nobody's and everybody's business. Magical.
Splendid reading of a Canadian classic.
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excellent
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Interesting narration of a timeless Canadian classic
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Margaret Atwood & Stephan King both recommended this trilogy and so far they are spot on....
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