Mixture Of Frailties - Softcover

Davies, Robertson

4.15

1,473 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140054324 ISBN 13: 9780140054323

Publisher: Penguin Canada, 1980

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"A Mixture of Frailties", the third volume of Robertson Davies "Salterton" Trilogy, is his first extended engagement with one of the great neuroses of Canadian culture: Canada's artistic relationship to Europe, and particularly to Britain. Davies begins his story with the funeral of Louisa Bridgetower, the Salterton matron whose imposing presence ranges throughout the earlier volumes of the "Salterton" Trilogy. The substantial income from her estate is to be used to send an unmarried young woman to Europe to pursue an education in the arts. Mrs. Bridgetower's executors end up selecting Monica Gall, an almost entirely unschooled singer whose sole experience comes from performing with the Heart and Hope Gospel Quartet, a rough outfit sponsored by a small fundamentalist group. Monica soon finds herself in England, a pupil of some of Britain's most remarkable teachers and composers, and she gradually blossoms from a Canadian rube to a cosmopolitan soprano with a unique - and tragicomic - career.

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About the Author:

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) was born and raised in Ontario, and was educated at a variety of schools, including Upper Canada College, Queen’s University, and Balliol College, Oxford. He had three successive careers: as an actor with the Old Vic Company in England; as publisher of the Peterborough Examiner; and as university professor and first Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto, from which he retired in 1981 with the title of Master Emeritus.

He was one of Canada’s most distinguished men of letters, with several volumes of plays and collections of essays, speeches, and belles lettres to his credit. As a novelist, he gained worldwide fame for his three trilogies: The Salterton Trilogy, The Deptford Trilogy, and The Cornish Trilogy, and for later novels Murther & Walking Spirits and The Cunning Man.

His career was marked by many honours: He was the first Canadian to be made an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he was a Companion of the Order of Canada, and he received honorary degrees from twenty-six American, Canadian, and British universities.

From AudioFile:

A mother posthumously stifles her son but grants a stranger spectacular opportunity. Third in a trilogy, yet independently satisfying, this presentation encourages listeners to seek more of Davies's beguiling prose. Will the audience pursue other narrations by Frederick Davidson? Fate, and what individuals do with it or in spite of it, are prevalent themes in Davies's writing, and a voice so incessantly rich and erudite as Davidson's poses an apropos question: Does Mr. Davidson have to work harder to overcome the gift of his deep, mellifluous tones? He reads expressively as various characters, yet his golden voice never actually seems to modulate. However, the words somehow outshine the voice delivering them, as they should. What power, yet whose: Davidson's or Davies's? D.J. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

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