East of the Sun & West of the Moon

The Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies
Book One in the Cornish Trilogy

I read this on the recommendation of a friend, who mentioned that the book is set at a Toronto university. This was one of the main draws for me, because I’m almost always interested in reading about scholarship, and academic intrigue. I’d enjoyed Fifth Business when I read it a few years ago, so I was familiar with Davies and already knew I liked his style. Besides, I always feel vaguely guilty for not reading more written by Canadian authors, and am trying to read more.

Until I was about two thirds of the way through the book, I probably couldn’t have told you what I thought the plot was, and once I did get to that point, the story took veered off in a completely unexpected direction. Basically though, the book deals with the interactions between several professors at this unnamed Toronto university, an old acquaintance many of them went to school with, and a graduate student they all teach.

One of my favourite things about this novel was the way Davies told the story alternating from the perspectives of the grad student Maria Magdelena Theotoky, and one of her teachers, professor and priest Simon Darcourt. I often rather dislike this, but I felt that in this case it was both well done, and that it added to the overall mood of the book. I liked that their narratives overlapped enough to demonstrate their different interpretations of the same events, and diverged enough to move the story along and keep things interesting. I also really enjoyed reading about the academic pursuits of all the various characters, and about the passion and mystery that came about as a result of their rather intense academic devotion.

Autumn, to me the most congenial of seasons: the University, to me the most congenial of lives. In all my years as a student and later as a university teacher I have observed that university terms tend to begin on a fine day. As I walked down the avenue of maples that leads toward the University Bookstore I was as happy as I suppose it is in my nature to be; my nature tends toward happiness, or toward enthusiastic industry, which for me is the same thing.