Your Humble Blogger read The Rebel Angels a couple of months ago in a volume that contained all three novels in the Cornish Trilogy. I didn’t blog it at the time, largely (to my recollection) because I hadn’t finished the volume, the physical book, even though I had finished the novel and set it aside. I suspect that I figured I would carry on and read What’s Bred in the Bone soon, and then The Lyre of Orpheus, and then I would note it in this Tohu Bohu. Which would be odd, actually, because the spine of the book split, right down the middle, and I finished reading The Rebel Angels with the back half of the book shoved under the bed. When I saw What’s Bred in the Bone at the library book sale (or wherever I was), I bought it more to replace the damaged three-in-one than to read the next in the series.
Once it was home, though, I reread it, and enjoyed it. I do love Robertson Davies’ novels. He has a marvelous ability to slip the grotesque into the mundane, and mix them up so sweetly that I have difficulty telling which is which. He’s full of crap on a variety of topics, but that’s not so bad; he is generously full of crap, chock full of crap, overflowing with crap in a ... fertile way. Or something. He’s very Dickensian, now that I think of it, in good ways and bad, too, which may account for my fondness for his faults as well as his virtues. And What’s Bred in the Bone is (at the moment) my favorite of his novels. There’s the magnificent recapitulation of Canadian history writ small(ish), the obsessive fetishization of art, in this case painting, and the majesting unfolding of the inevitable plot. I should get The Lyre of Orpheus, or find the back half of the book I shoved under the bed back then.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
What’s Bred in the Bone is one of my very favorite books ever. It is the only novel that I reread regularly that isn’t young adult fiction. It’s hard to describe quite why I like it so much, but Davies crafts some very readable and intelligent writing & Bred in the Bone is my favorite of his stories.
If you haven’t read Davies’ letters, you should. I still haven’t finished For Your Eyes Only, but this book of letters sits on my headboard for delicious dipping into whenever my too be read pile gets a little low.
I was at a friend’s house recently and started reading her copy of the letters. I only got a short way into it, and will look out for a copy to buy or borrow to finish it.
Thanks,
-V.
Is this the Robertson Davies book which is full of crap in a somewhat more literal (or at least topical) way? Because, if so, well played, well played, and lightly.