ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 24, 1995 TAG: 9512270109
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY PAUL E. FITZGERALD
THE CUNNING MAN. By Robertson Davies. Viking. $23.95.
You may have missed Robertson Davies' smoothly crafted description of a Canadian physician's life, back at the turn of this year when it was on the best-seller lists.
Now that the author's death on Dec. 2 has rendered it his valedictory, you could be well-served and entertained by this warm development of a somewhat cold intellectual and his close circle of elitist Canadian anglophiles.
The odds for having a pleasurable read are increased further if you have enjoyed any of Davies' 30 books (including the Deptford Trilogy) and plays which have been translated into 17 languages.
The physician protagonist is the first-person narrator of this flowing account of his life, from his wilderness boyhood in a mining town 2,000 miles northwest of Toronto, through World War II Canadian Army service and a stint as a police surgeon, to his only passionate infatuation in his twilight years - not totally in that order.
This Cunning Man begins his story in the middle, hops and skips backward, and then, with asides and parenthetical explications, moves forward with building momentum.
There are two murders - one subtly managed and only vaguely suspected, and another a forthright brutal slaying.
The deaths, a suitably sophisticated adultery, gays, lesbians and all else are entwined in an elliptical presentation of characters who probably will expose you to more than you really care to know about high church Anglicans.
Davies did not abandon here his propensity for mixing flashes of the humorous, the ludicrous, a world floating between heaven and hell and seasoned with a liberal sprinkling of Jungian psychology. But he does reflect mellowing with age.
The affectionate but occasionally ironic bestowing of the Cunning Man appellation upon our narrator is explained at one point as deriving from an old tradition of English villages. "There was a Wise Woman or else a Cunning Man. Never both in the same place."
The Cunning Man of tradition is described as "sort of a village know-all."
The Cunning Man of Davies' creation stands ready at all times with the answers to anyone else's questions, while practicing a non-traditional and magically successful type of psychosomatic medicine. Only in answering his own ultimate questions does he interpose a mild hesitancy.
Davies had announced his intention to write another book after Christmas. He told one reporter that he was "trying to do something which I think is rather important: getting old without getting stupid."
It obviously was not penned as an exit line for the author, but Davies surely heard "Time's winged chariot hurrying near" when he had his Cunning Man leave us with an appropriate Davies description of the Great Theatre of Life: "Admission is free but the taxation is mortal. You come when you can, and leave when you must. The show is continuous.
Paul E. Fitzgerald is a recovering journalist who lives on a farm overlooking Fincastle.
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Robertson Davies, author of "The Cunning Man."by CNB