He is a Canadian writer, and if I had grown up in Canada, I’m sure I would have read something by him in high school; I hadn’t, I knew he was well regarded, so I got curious (I am also working one of those classic jobs that gives you time and incentive for reading: night watchman).

I started with The Deptford Trilogy (Fifth Business, The Manticore, World of Wonders). I found that he wrote interesting characters. I liked his approach to trilogies: not (as typical) as a big book separated by pauses or cliff-hangers, but an approach to a set of characters from another direction. The first book tells a tale (close to a life’s story) by one narrator. The second starts as the psychoanalysis session of the son of one of the characters in the first book, which presents some of the events of the first book in a different light. The third book focuses on the life story of another character, and a mystery unresolved in the first two books is finally answered.

I also read The Salterton Trilogy (Tempest-Tost, Leaven of Malice, A Mixture of Frailties), The Cornish Trilogy (The Rebel Angels, What’s Bred in the Bone, The Lyre of Orpheus), Murther and Walking Spirits and The Cunning Man (the first two books of what would have been The Toronto triology, incomplete on the author’s death).

Not having enough of Davies at that point, I also read High Spirits (a series of college-themed ‘ghost stories’ he told at the annual Christmas parties at Massey College) and The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks (a collection of newspapers columns by a pseudonymous alter-ego).

Hoovered through those over a couple of months; that’s how engaging a writer he was. I found myself wondering if John M. Ford had read him: he would have enjoyed the wit, and Ford’s interest in theater would have been echoed in Davies writing.

In short: recommended reading.