In 1981, the year The Rebel Angels was written, Robertson Davies retired after eighteen years as Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto. He had also spent more than twenty years as editor and publisher of the Peterborough Examiner and was principal book reviewer for the weekly Saturday Night. He received many accolades including the Stephen Leacock Medal for humour, the Lorne Pierce Medal, The Governor-General’s Award, and 23 honorary degrees. He was made a Companion to the Order of Canada and was the first Canadian to become an Honorary Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. As a playwright and novelist he was one of Canada’s most admired authors. He described himself as a recluse. Robertson Davies died in Orangeville, Ontario in 1995.

Set in the exalted air of university life and written with the easy, down to earth style of a natural storyteller, the reader is transported into a world of colourful characters, theft, murder and love.

The title is taken from the story of the angels Samahazai and Azazel who betrayed the secrets of heaven to King Solomon and were thrown out of paradise. Unlike Lucifer who wreaked vengeance, they came to earth and taught tongues, healing, laws and hygiene and often succeeded with the “daughters of men”. Many parallels can be made with the learned men of St. John’s College who are not always what they seem. The cast includes characters such as the scholarly Clement Hollier, who knows what he wants but not how to get it, Ozias Froats, whose unusual research is almost an obsession and very much misunderstood, and John Parlabane, rogue and defrocked monk who claims he “went over the wall” to escape the confines of a monastic life. Woven into all their lives is the influence of Maria Theotoky, a lavishly beautiful student who is of Gypsy origin.

When wealthy art patron, Francis Cornish, dies and leaves his priceless collection in chaos it is up to his executors and university colleagues to sort the tempting hoard. One coveted item is missing but proving who has it is almost impossible. The eventual recovery reveals more than just theft.

Davies departed from the traditional style of first person narrative by changing the narrator in some chapters. This can be a little confusing at first but it is an effective method when there are a number of important characters whose points of view must be shown. His subtle and often zany humour pervades a story that is rich in character and laden with surprises. This is a book that reinforces his reputation as a first class storyteller. ( )

http://www.lonelymountain.net/books/j... ( )

I confess to being hooked by the first four lines:

“PARLABANE IS BACK.”
“What?”
“Hadn’t you heard? Parlabane is back.”
“Oh my God!”

I also confess to having never thought of Canada as being so potentially rich in character and setting until I read The Rebel Angels. No doubt, that was a fault on my part. Not only does our neighbor to the north go up a peg, but I wager that no careful reader of this novel will ever think of the gifts of the second and third Magi in the same way again. Parlabane himself is so gross and fascinating that his relative absence in the middle parts of the book induced a bit of boredom, but gypsies and the shocking, funny and oddly moral conclusion redeem all. ( )

A novel about graduate students, monks, academics and more. I enjoyed this novel a great deal as it is so consciously set in the academic world. Davies' style here is still stimulating, but I found it more accessible than his much more famous novel, "Fifth Business."

Davies' musings on Christianity - on how Protestants and Catholics relate - and how traditional Christianity interacts with different traditions is one of the parts of this that I really liked.

It is set, not quite so secretly, at a fictional college of the University of Toronto. ( )

Et ukendt manuskript af Rabelais dukker op på et canadisk universitet, og med et markant persongalleri i hovedrollerne: præsten, middelaldereksperten, munken og den smukke sigøjnerstudine sættes der gang i intrigerne.