Product Description

Gypsies, defrocked monks, mad professors, and wealthy eccentrics-a remarkable cast peoples Robertson Davies' brilliant spectacle of theft, perjury, murder, scholarship, and love at a modern university. Only Mr. Davies, author of Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders, could have woven together their destinies with such wit, humour-and wisdom.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #442097 in Books
• Published on: 1997-07-31
• Released on: 1997-07-31
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Amazon.ca
The Rebel Angels is the inaugural volume of the Cornish Trilogy, Robertson Davies's final completed series. These are Davies's oddest books, and they've sparked more controversy than any of his other works, simply because they are the most sensitive to a reader's tastes--depending on one's sensibilities, they will either prove to be delightful or dreadfully dull.

Like A Mixture of Frailties, the first of Davies's major novels, The Rebel Angels revolves around the execution of a difficult will. In this case, the estate is of one Francis Cornish, a fantastically rich patron and collector of Canadian art and a noted antiquarian bibliophile. A lost Rabelais manuscript is rumoured to be among his possessions, and his executors include the deliciously revolting Renaissance scholar Urquhart McVarish; Professor Clement Hollier, a classically middle-aged inhabitant of the ivory tower; and the Reverend Simon Darcourt, Davies's obligatory humanist clergyman. A heroine is provided in the form of Maria Theotoky, a beautiful Ph.D. student of Professor Hollier's. A rich, funny, and slightly ribald campus novel results, one that revels in the fustian of the now-vanished pre-postmodern university.

The Cornish Trilogy is by far the most arcane of Davies's major works. The later volumes, What's Bred in the Bone and The Lyre of Orpheus, extend out of the corporeal world, bringing angels, daimons, and souls in limbo into the fray. Davies's love for obscure learning is at its peak here. While he is often faulted for this, it is really the best part of the fun, provided the reader is willing to follow him into the storehouses of forgotten thought and accept that there is still much of contemporary relevance in the disused fancies of the past. --Jack Illingworth

From Library Journal
Frederick Davidson reads this multi-layered book with more or less success. On one level, Davies's novel is "about" four academics: Maria Theotoky, the brilliant, beautiful graduate student; her adviser, the ascetic Dr. Hollier; Simon Darcourt, the bon vivant priest; and Parlabane, once an outstanding scholar, now sycophant to his former classmates. Then there is the basic plot theme: Who will end up with the girl? Standard stuff. Yet the real focus here is on the spiritual and/or mystical personal explorations of the main characters. Unfortunately the story's lack of organizational coherence has a negative effect on the apparent striving for deeper meaning. In addition, while Davidson is an extremely competent reader of male voices, he makes the supposedly alluring Maria sound almost maternal. For all its imperfections, this book is a compelling performance. Recommended for moderate to large literature collections.?I. Pour-El, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
The Rebel Angels is Canadian novelist Robertson Davies's sometimes philosophical tale of academic life at the College of St. John. Frederick Davidson tells us a story of peculiar events and characters whose lives are entwined through scholarly passions of one type or another. He accomplishes the task of preserving this restless story with a flowing narration. He modulates the voice of Maria, a graduate student, separating her from male companions with expressive accuracy. His slight English accent and dry, earthy elocution soundly stir this fiction to its concluding moment. B.J.L. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine