THE CUNNING MAN

Admirers of the late actor James Mason will delight in the narrative gifts of Frederick Davidson, who also projects a delicious irony in the instrument of his voice. And what better material to give expression to that talent than Robertson Davies’s, Canada’s most prodigious ironist. THE CUNNING MAN is dense, difficult material full of Davies’s usual digressions and narrative complications. But Davidson’s reading never flags. He remains buoyant and wry throughout, a witty companion to have on a long journey. The book’s protagonist, Jonathan Hullah, shares those qualities himself as he recounts his life as a Canadian physician with a large appetite for the mysterious, the miraculous, the spiritual and, most particularly, the ironic. M.O. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPT 97]