This novel tells the life story of the unfortunate boy introduced in The Fifth Business, who was spirited away from his Canadian home by one of the members of a traveling side show, the Wanless World of Wonders. World of Wonders This is the third novel in Davies's major work, The Deptford Trilogy. Luring the reader down labyrinthine tunnels of myth, history and magic, THE DEPTFORD TRILOGY provides an exhilarating antidote to a world from where 'the fear and dread and splendour of wonder have been banished'. The Manticore Around a mysterious death is woven a glittering, fantastical, cunningly contrived trilogy of novels.

Fifth Business stands alone as a remarkable story told by a rational man who discovers that the marvelous is only another aspect of the real. His apparently innocent involvement in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball or the teaching of card tricks to a small boy in the end prove neither innocent nor innocuous. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him. Also, notably given my own personal preferences, the female characters are as multidimensional as the males, and Davies has some interesting and subtle thoughts on the cultural phenomenon of masculinity.Fifth Business Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. World of Wonders This is the third novel in Daviess major work, The Deptford Trilogy. But 'Fifth Business'! Ahhh! Just read them. Luring the reader down labyrinthine tunnels of myth, history and magic, THE DEPTFORD TRILOGY provides an exhilarating antidote to a world from where the fear and dread and splendour of wonder have been banished. Picking a favorite feels impossible, although on the one hand, 'The Manticore' introduces the belligerent narrator to a formidable (and formidably compassionate) opponent in the form of a female psychoanalyst, so of course I love that, and on the other, 'World of Wonders' links past and present in a way that feels satisfying, but not too pat.

Davies managed what seems to be a tricky feat in trilogies - weaving together three novels (novellas?) with different narrators (one narrator appears twice, at different phases in life) and distinctly different feels that shed light on the same captivating plot. 10 years later, I couldn't recall the plot, but knew I was spellbound by it, so dove back in. I first read my mom's tattered copy of this triology in college.

The deptford trilogy review