Toronto Trilogy

Connor Gilmartin's inauspicious, but much beloved, mortal life comes to an untimely end when he discovers his wife in bed with one of his more ludicrous associates, Randall Allard Going. Death becomes a bit complicated when Gilmartin's out-of-body experience stays an out-of-body experience. Enraged at being so unceremoniously cut down, he avenges himself against his now panic-stricken murderer.

From an early age, Jonathan Hullah developed "a high degree of cunning" in concealing what his true nature might be. He kept himself on the outside, watching and noticing, most often in the company of those who bore watching. As the Cunning Man takes us through his own long and ardent life, chronicling his varied adventures in the worlds of theatre, art, and music, in the Canadian Army during World War II, and in the doctor's consulting room, his preoccupation is not with sorrow but with the comedic canvas of life. Just as Dr. Hullah practices a type of psychosomatic medicine "by which I attempt to bring about changes in the disease syndromes through language," so does Robertson Davies intertwine language and story, as perhaps never before, to offer us profound truths about being human.