Fantastical great! ( )

a murdered man's soul learns self acceptance by viewing "films" of his ancestors.

Connor Gilmartin, director de la sección de espectáculos de un periódico de Toronto, encuentra a su mujer en la cama con el crítico del mismo diario. El amante lo asesina, pero el fantasma de Connor perseguirá a su homicida hasta un importante festival de cine que tiene que cubrir. Mientras el crítico se esfuerza en analizar las películas que proyectan, el espectro de Gilmartin deviene espectador privilegiado de unas sesiones fantasmales en las que visiona films alucinantes sobre la historia de su propia familia. De algún modo, la realidad y la ficción terminarán por confundirse. Con su tono más humorístico, Robertson Davies, el mejor novelista canadiense del siglo xx, nos ofrece el fantástico retrato de un hombre cuya vida se ve repentinamente truncada, pero que renace a otro tipo de existencia mucho más lúcida, y libre. En esta magnífica novela, la aventura y la reflexión se alternan en una serie de episodios tan hilarantes como, por qué no, deliciosamente creíbles.

The novel begins with the death of its narrator, Connor Gilmartin, who walks in on his wife and her lover, and gets coshed with a weighted walking stick for his indiscretion. Adding insult to injury, the lover was a newspaper colleague Gil contemptuously referred to as "the Sniffer", a man seemingly possessed of no personal magnetism or uncommon sexual appeal whatsoever. Furthermore, as the murder is officially attributed to an unidentified intruder, the Sniffer gets away with it. Gil finds himself in an odd sort of limbo in which he must accompany his murderer to a film festival for several days, viewing a rather different sort of cinema than the classics being shown to the Sniffer and everyone else. As generations of family history unfold on the screen, both Gil and the reader learn a great deal about American and Canadian history that aren't well-covered in the textbooks. He finds himself to be descended from Loyalists who fled the colonies of North America to settle in Canada at the time of the American Revolution. This works well as straight historical fiction, and if Davies had left out the frame he still would have had a fine novel. But naturally, the point of all this is for Gil to come to a fuller understanding of who he was, and what meaning his life may have had. At one point, Gil observes "It is merciful of Whatever or Whoever is directing my existence at this moment to show the past as a work of art, for it was as a work of art that I tried to understand life, while I had life, and much of my indignation at the manner of my death is its want of artistic form, dimension, emotional weight, dignity." ( )

"I was never so amazed in my life as when the Sniffer drew his concealed weapon from its case and struck me to the ground, stone dead."

Gil Gilmartin walked in on his wife and her lover who whacked Gilmartin with a weapon concealed in his walking stick, killing him instantly. Gilmartin immediately realizes he is dead yet able to watch, unseen, as his wife and the lover, Allard Going, nicknamed the Sniffer, try to cover up the murder. Then, after this excellent opening, the story goes in a different direction. Gilmartin, like Going, is a newspaper film critic and follows Going to a film festival only to find his viewing is different from any other. His films detail his ancestors from the American Revolution to modern times. It is an examination of how Gilmartin - or Davies, as the film is said to have closely followed Davies' own origins - came to be the person he is - or was, in this case.

As a perusal of personal history, it must have been fascinating for Davies, but while I found some parts quite interesting, other sections were less so. Reading slowed, interest lagged. However, the ending was perfect. The lineage continues and the pretentious Sniffer receives fitting justice. Entertaining, but this turned out to be my least favourite from Davies. ( )