A Mixture of Frailties by Davies
A Mixture of Frailties (1958)
by Robertson Davies
379 pages - Penguin
In this final book of the Salterton trilogy, Solly Bridgetower's mother dies; but she does not leave her money to her son, instead establishing a trust that will be inherited by Solly's first-born son, if he and his new wife manage to have one. In the meantime, the interest from the money is to be spent on choosing a young woman from Salterton with talent in the arts, and giving her an education in Europe. Monica Gall, who sings in a small evangelical church group, is selected and sent to London, England, where most of the story takes place.
Davies makes a noticeable shift here, from the light humour of his first two books to this fairly serious story of the education of an artist, the kind of narrative he would explore many times in the future. All the basics of a story are here and I wanted to like it, but it just didn't really have any kind of urgency or cohesion. The story goes on and on and it never feels very necessary. There's also a lot of 'life advice' that's spouted by the various people, and most of it comes off as very overbearing and paternalistic, like you're being hectored with trite sayings by someone very self-satisfied and smug.
It would be more than ten years before Davies published another novel, and things that that fell flat here would begin to work masterfully, for that book would be Fifth Business, probably the greatest Canadian novel ever.
by Robertson Davies
379 pages - Penguin
In this final book of the Salterton trilogy, Solly Bridgetower's mother dies; but she does not leave her money to her son, instead establishing a trust that will be inherited by Solly's first-born son, if he and his new wife manage to have one. In the meantime, the interest from the money is to be spent on choosing a young woman from Salterton with talent in the arts, and giving her an education in Europe. Monica Gall, who sings in a small evangelical church group, is selected and sent to London, England, where most of the story takes place.
Davies makes a noticeable shift here, from the light humour of his first two books to this fairly serious story of the education of an artist, the kind of narrative he would explore many times in the future. All the basics of a story are here and I wanted to like it, but it just didn't really have any kind of urgency or cohesion. The story goes on and on and it never feels very necessary. There's also a lot of 'life advice' that's spouted by the various people, and most of it comes off as very overbearing and paternalistic, like you're being hectored with trite sayings by someone very self-satisfied and smug.
It would be more than ten years before Davies published another novel, and things that that fell flat here would begin to work masterfully, for that book would be Fifth Business, probably the greatest Canadian novel ever.