Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780143039136
ISBN: 014303913X
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 336
Publication Date: February 28, 2006
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Sales Rank: 488698
Studio: Penguin Classics

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Related Items:

• World of Wonders (Penguin Classics)
• Fifth Business (Penguin Classics)
• The Deptford Trilogy
• The Cornish Trilogy
• A Jest of God (Phoenix Fiction Series)
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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
Hailed by the Washington Post Book World as "a modern classic," Robertson Davies’s acclaimed Deptford Trilogy is a glittering, fantastical, cunningly contrived series of novels, around which a mysterious death is woven. The Manticore—the second book in the series after Fifth Business—follows David Staunton, a man pleased with his success but haunted by his relationship with his larger-than-life father. As he seeks help through therapy, he encounters a wonderful cast of characters who help connect him to his past and the death of his father.




Rating: - Great stuff if read as part of the trilogy
This is the second installment in the Deptford Trilogy, and my first bit of advice is that you read it in conjunction with Fifth Business, the first installment. I read Fifth Business years ago, and loved it, and struggled to remember the details of it as I began The Manticore. It isn't absolutely necessary to remember every word of the first in order to enjoy the second, but each one does help to accentuate the other.

The Manticore is great writing from a great writer. Davies prose ... Read More

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Rating: - Intelligent and beautifully written
This is my first Davies novel and I suspect I started with the wrong one in the series; however, MANTICORE was a fascinating read. In this, David Staunton comes to Zurich for psychoanalysis with a Jungian therapist after his father dies in a very strange accident. (Boy Staunton, his father, died in an auto accident with an egg sized stone of pink Canadian granite in his mouth) You think we're going to get a payoff on the mystery, which we eventually do, but we first have to go through Davey's life and ... Read More

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Rating: - It's just filler
I think the problem with this book is that Davies wrote the trilogy so that each book could stand by its own and that they need not be read in a particular order. While that sounded like a great idea initially, it seems to only work in theory. At least a half of this book is a blatant recap of Fifth Business, and most of the rest of it is an extrapolation into the very mundane. Everything that is unique to this book (because all three books have some exclusive content) is very non-consequential, and can ... Read More

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Rating: - Complex & interesting!
The life of the protagonist--whom we previously knew just an appendage to his father's colossal persona in Fifth Business--is analyzed. The story has many sockets within sockets and abundant psychological theory. Robertson Davies is so artful sn author that the information on archetypes never feels as though it came out of an encyclopedia. Rather, it is essential to the character's trajectory. Highly recommended. Makes me proud to be a Canadian!

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Rating: - A Jungian perspective
The story is everything with Davies books. He captured me with the tale of David Staunton, who is only a minor character in Fifth Business.

As with Dunstan Ramsay, the narrator of the first book of the Deptford Trilogy, David Staunton is very much a character who needs to be brought back into balance from an extreme psyche. The book explores his eccentric character through Jungian psychology. Since Davies daugther is a Jungian psychologist, he no doubt used her as a resource in compiling the ... Read More

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