What’s Bred in the Bone

Robertson Davies is apparently a very famous Canadian novelist. The fact that I didn’t know this is not surprising, I guess.

I was visiting a friend in Ottawa, and we went to a local bookstore. He handed me this and told me to buy it. He said it was required reading for most Canadian high school students.

It’s an epic historical novel about the life of Francis Cornish, born to wealthy parents in a small Canadian town. He life leads him on some strange adventures involving spies, Worlds Wars, and art restoration and forgery.

I enjoyed the story. It covers Cornish’s life from a long view – the novel covers several generations of his family, and sometimes multiple years pass in a single sentence.

However, I didn’t think it was particularly Canadian. Most of Cornish’s life happens in Europe. Do I feel that I understand anything more about the “Canadian experience” from reading it? Not really.

I have talked to many Canadian friends about it. They’re about evenly split as to whether Davies is fundamentally notable in Canadian literature. Some absolutely agree, but several had never heard of him.