Rating: 
Summary: Two's Company, Three Don't Work
Review: The first two novels in this alleged trilogy are brilliant novels. The Rebel Angels and What's Bred In The Bone are splendid comedies, intelligent, moving, surprising, and well-plotted. Then The Lyre Of Orpheus comes along and ruins everything. I wonder if Davies wasn't conned into writing the third book by some editor, who told him that trilogies sell so much better than mere single novels. It might account for the general perfunctoriness of The Lyre Of Orpheus, in which Davies barely seems to be awake. Read the first two. Devour them. Enjoy them. Ignore the last one. It is a waste of paper.
Rating:
Summary: the charm of quirkiness in Canada
Review: These are very fun novels, set for the most part in Canada's obscure academic retreats. Becase of Maria, the half gypsy who may be a budding genius, Rebel Angels is perhaps the most charmng of all. Maria is beautiful, lovelorn, and brilliant, a wonderfully articulate youth who is discovering her talents. Her gypsy family is fascinating and very funny. Then there is Parlabane, the villain tempter, whose "unusual appetites" are as hilarious as they are dangerous. There are scenes is this one that are destined to become classic, as the knitting needles illustrate. It is not for the sqeamish, however. The second novel, What's Bred in the Bone, is less about academia and more about the art world over 40 years. It too is fun, though much sadder than its predecessor. With characteristic subtlety, Davies' characters manipulate eachother and play games within games, to the extent that if you like this kind of thing you can talk about it for hours. Finally, the last novel was something of a dud for me, much flimsier than the rest. I never could get through it. Warmly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: the charm of quirkiness in Canada
Review: These are very fun novels, set for the most part in Canada's obscure academic retreats. Becase of Maria, the half gypsy who may be a budding genius, Rebel Angels is perhaps the most charmng of all. Maria is beautiful, lovelorn, and brilliant, a wonderfully articulate youth who is discovering her talents. Her gypsy family is fascinating and very funny. Then there is Parlabane, the villain tempter, whose "unusual appetites" are as hilarious as they are dangerous. There are scenes is this one that are destined to become classic, as the knitting needles illustrate. It is not for the sqeamish, however. The second novel, What's Bred in the Bone, is less about academia and more about the art world over 40 years. It too is fun, though much sadder than its predecessor. With characteristic subtlety, Davies' characters manipulate eachother and play games within games, to the extent that if you like this kind of thing you can talk about it for hours. Finally, the last novel was something of a dud for me, much flimsier than the rest. I never could get through it. Warmly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: These are wonderful books, i like the way Davies makes each of them a stand alone novel in its own right, as well as part of a series- and i should know, having read the Lyre of Orpheus first, then What's Bred in the Bone, and finishing with the first. The stories don't always go where you expect, which is one of the best parts, but they are fascinating views.
Rating:
Summary: "Lyre" deserves more credit
Review: This review is about "The Lyre of Orpheus," the third book in The Cornish Trilogy, and a work that merits more comment than a previous reviewer's "unremarkable." Davies is one of my favorite writers. His "The Cunning Man" is excellent - a yarn within a yarn, as I've said elsewhere. "Lyre" is similar in style. Reading a Davies novel is a pastime, more rewarding than at first glance, like doing large tabletop puzzles. His characters are archetypes, and his stories repeat patterns like waltzes. The unfolding of the patterns is a reading pleasure. In "Lyre," The Cornish Foundation sponsors an opera about King Arthur. The head of the Foundation is named Arthur, and the opera and our narrative follow parallel story lines. Another element to the puzzle appears. The opera is to be staged in the 19th-century style, while a deliberately anachronistic painting enters the drama. This device abounds in Davies' novels. As a reader, you start in the middle of the onion layers and work both ways, inward to the center, penetrating the simpler layers (Arthur and Arthur), and outward from the dramatic action, finding the themes (how many anachronisms are there?), pleased as when while listening to music a melody reappears, transformed. The transformations can be as pleasant as the melody. "Lyre" isn't my favorite Davies' work, but it has the familiar elements for which I return again and again. In most reviews I would say "read if you like this sort of thing." Not this time. Read. Put down your Anne Rice or Don DeLillo for a moment. Make a glass of lemonade and sit at the table. It will do you good to work at a puzzle for a change.
Rating:
Summary: "Lyre" deserves more credit
Review: This review is about "The Lyre of Orpheus," the third book in The Cornish Trilogy, and a work that merits more comment than a previous reviewer's "unremarkable." Davies is one of my favorite writers. His "The Cunning Man" is excellent - a yarn within a yarn, as I've said elsewhere. "Lyre" is similar in style. Reading a Davies novel is a pastime, more rewarding than at first glance, like doing large tabletop puzzles. His characters are archetypes, and his stories repeat patterns like waltzes. The unfolding of the patterns is a reading pleasure. In "Lyre," The Cornish Foundation sponsors an opera about King Arthur. The head of the Foundation is named Arthur, and the opera and our narrative follow parallel story lines. Another element to the puzzle appears. The opera is to be staged in the 19th-century style, while a deliberately anachronistic painting enters the drama. This device abounds in Davies' novels. As a reader, you start in the middle of the onion layers and work both ways, inward to the center, penetrating the simpler layers (Arthur and Arthur), and outward from the dramatic action, finding the themes (how many anachronisms are there?), pleased as when while listening to music a melody reappears, transformed. The transformations can be as pleasant as the melody. "Lyre" isn't my favorite Davies' work, but it has the familiar elements for which I return again and again. In most reviews I would say "read if you like this sort of thing." Not this time. Read. Put down your Anne Rice or Don DeLillo for a moment. Make a glass of lemonade and sit at the table. It will do you good to work at a puzzle for a change.
Rating: 
Summary: Even more satisfying than The Deptford Trilogy
Review: While my favorite novel by Robertson Davies remains Fifth Business, a book so dazzling it leaves me almost speechless, I feel the three novels of The Cornish Trilogy--The Rebel Angels, What's Bred in the Bone and The Lyre of Orpheus--are more satisfying in the aggregate than The Deptford Trilogy. The middle novel, What's Bred in the Bone, is the lynchpin of the trilogy--the "biography" of Francis Cornish, a wealthy art collector and restorer who in time will be suspected of being an art forger, but who in reality is a great artist of high inward purpose. To remind us of Mark Twain's dictum that a man's true biography is what goes on in his own mind, the book is narrated by the two invisible spirits who served as Cornish's guardians on Earth--the only ones who will ever know the whole truth about him. What's Bred in the Bone is sandwiched in between The Rebel Angels, about mayhem and skulduggery among a group of academics when they inherit the bountiful legacy of the late Francis Cornish, and The Lyre of Orpheus, concerning the convoluted doings when a young musical genius tries to recreate an unfinished opera by E.T.A. Hoffmann. This book features a particularly rollicking gang of characters, including E.T.A. Hoffmann himself speaking from the grave. Davies' style glistens with his trademark scholarship and wit; his Jungian philosophy, deep spirituality and often profound insights into the artistic process make these novels important works of art as well as delightful semi-satiric, semi-fantasy romps. One major complaint I have about Davies is that all his characters tend to sound like erudite, well-settled, middle-aged men--fine for the Rev. Simon Darcourt, but not for Maria Theotoky Cornish, the 23-year-old, half-Gypsy beauty. Also, some of his set pieces simply go on too long, such as the contentious "Arthurian" dinner party thrown by Arthur and Maria Cornish. However, the totality of Davies' gifts is so enormous that I'm willing to forgive him his flaws.
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