Madeleine L'Engle recommended this book and the other two books in the Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies, in her Reflections on a Writing Life book I wrote about below. This weekend I checked out the Deptford Trilogy from the library as well as a book by Josephine Tey, another L'Engle recommended read.
World of Wonders is the third book and will get its own blog as I haven't finished it yet.
I thought this trilogy was going to be more of a straight fantasy - thinking of L'Engle's Time Trilogy - but really the myth and wonder in these books are much more subtle. The characters are for the most part "regular" people - who grew up in one small Canadian town called Deptford.
The three books cover roughly the same chronological events but they have 3 different narrators so the end result is as if you are able to "zoom in" on the story from the vantage point of the specific narrator for that book.
I was pleasantly surprised that this was the case, as it really gives you much more time to get into the story and really know all the characters better.
Also I was very happy to be surprised by who were the narrators and main characters for each of the books so I won't write any more here about the plot.
It's interesting that I knew I was going to read these when I was pulled over to Margaret Atwood in the bookstore and they are of course both Canadian and also both with some similiarity in that they are writing fairly realistically but with some aspects of myth, fantasy, and/or the future in the story.
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