The Lyre of Orpheus

Rating:
Summary: Very Bad Indeed
Review: After having read The Rebel Angels and What's Bred In The Bone, and enjoying both of them immensely, I was terribly disappointed in this final book in what finally wound up being the Cornish Trilogy. The pomposity that Davies had always managed to keep in check before finally runs riot, as his barely diguised contempt for his readers' intelligence is clearly displayed.

Watch all the characters that you had grown to know and love from the earlier two novels degenerate into mere caricatures. Be angry at the editor who convinced Davies to churn out a third book about these people, so that the publisher could market the group as a TRILOGY. Be sorry you wasted the money and the time on this book.

Rating:
Summary: Unless your an Welsh Opera fanatic
Review: After reading "The Rebel Angels" and "What's Bred in the Bone", two five star novels, I expected to thoroughly enjoy the last segment of the trilogy. Well, the only reason I made it through the novel was that I wanted to say that I read the entire trilogy. The book completely changes in tone from the first two. Professors I respected in the first books are buffoons in this one. There are an untold number of quotations from opera librettos, medieval poems, etc. that were not relevant to me at all. One of the characters is incapable of appearing without making multiple references to Wales, Welsh literature and history. This would not have been a problem except that this is one of the main characters. The whole gypsy theme, which was so fascinating in the rebel angels gets overwhelmed by the Welshness.

In sum, it turned its back on wonderful characters, made obscure references to poems I never read, focused too much on opera and changed in tone from the first two books in a rather dissappointing way. Alas.

Rating:
Summary: Unless your an Welsh Opera fanatic
Review: After reading "The Rebel Angels" and "What's Bred in the Bone", two five star novels, I expected to thoroughly enjoy the last segment of the trilogy. Well, the only reason I made it through the novel was that I wanted to say that I read the entire trilogy. The book completely changes in tone from the first two. Professors I respected in the first books are buffoons in this one. There are an untold number of quotations from opera librettos, medieval poems, etc. that were not relevant to me at all. One of the characters is incapable of appearing without making multiple references to Wales, Welsh literature and history. This would not have been a problem except that this is one of the main characters. The whole gypsy theme, which was so fascinating in the rebel angels gets overwhelmed by the Welshness.

In sum, it turned its back on wonderful characters, made obscure references to poems I never read, focused too much on opera and changed in tone from the first two books in a rather dissappointing way. Alas.

Rating:
Summary: Unless your an Welsh Opera fanatic
Review: After reading "The Rebel Angels" and "What's Bred in the Bone", two five star novels, I expected to thoroughly enjoy the last segment of the trilogy. Well, the only reason I made it through the novel was that I wanted to say that I read the entire trilogy. The book completely changes in tone from the first two. Professors I respected in the first books are buffoons in this one. There are an untold number of quotations from opera librettos, medieval poems, etc. that were not relevant to me at all. One of the characters is incapable of appearing without making multiple references to Wales, Welsh literature and history. This would not have been a problem except that this is one of the main characters. The whole gypsy theme, which was so fascinating in the rebel angels gets overwhelmed by the Welshness.

In sum, it turned its back on wonderful characters, made obscure references to poems I never read, focused too much on opera and changed in tone from the first two books in a rather dissappointing way. Alas.

Rating:
Summary: Robertson at his best. Great characters and a great tale
Review: Darcourt on logic; Let logic keep its honourable place, where it has served man well, but it should not take absurd airs on itself as the only way of settling a problem or finding a path. Logic could be the weapon with which fear defies fate.

Robertson Davies, The Lyre Of Orpheus

Rating:
Summary: Regarding opera
Review: I have some of the same criticisms that others have about this book. Somehow, Maria doesn't seem fleshed out as well as I had hoped from Davies. He seems to have a little trouble with characterizations of women. However, no one is perfect and that is a minor problem for a very talented author. I loved this book as much as the others (actually, Rebel Angels was my least favorite of this trilogy). Each book was about a different type of art. Rebel Angels was about a (sort of) the writing of a novel, What's Bred in the Bone about painting, and the Lyre is about opera. It was wonderful seeing Darcourt come into his own, the resolution of Frank Cornishes' painting, and the opera develop. I enjoyed the rather transparent parallels in the plot of the opera and the life of the prinipals. All of Davies books have this (sometimes more in the background than in others) one theme that is most present in this book, namely, find your own myth and live it to its fullest. Written well aand truly.

Rating:
Summary: Fun, But The Weakest of the Trilogy
Review: In The Rebel Angels, Maria's character, provided in a first-person narrative, was so complex and interesting that I'd have been happy with a "Theotoky Trilogy"! Maria's friendship with Darcourt was well drawn and bittersweet. Perhaps a fourth of the way through Lyre, the third person omniscient narration no longer records Maria's thoughts, and Darcourt's journey of self-discovery really gets underway within the context of his Cornish text and the stories of the Hoffman opera and Maria's and Arthur's crisis. Thus, echoing "Henry's" review of this novel, I was disappointed that Maria's own journey remains "under a cloud" (as Darcourt put it), and the novel never really develops her character except as an unintended Guenevere and her final promise to "keep on trying." I'd have liked less rumination on the "magnanimous cuckold" theme--which seems strained after a while and never really reaches as deeply as possible into the pain of the Cornishes' crisis--and more development of Arthur's complex personality, perhaps Maria's research with the Portfolio (a story line pretty much dropped in Lyre), and other themes. Having said all this, however, I greatly enjoyed this novel, and the troublesome course toward the premiere of Hoffman's opera and the publication of Darcourt's life of Francis Cornish made for an erudite and pleasurable story. Davies' novels always provide a richer world than one finds in many stories, and it's a tribute to his gifts that he mixed so many rich worlds in this trilogy.

Rating:
Summary: Maria Sophia
Review: In The Rebel Angels, Maria's character, provided in a first-person narrative, was so complex and interesting that I'd have been happy with a "Theotoky Trilogy"! Maria's friendship with Darcourt was well drawn and bittersweet. Perhaps a fourth of the way through Lyre, the third person omniscient narration no longer records Maria's thoughts, and Darcourt's journey of self-discovery really gets underway within the context of his Cornish text and the stories of the Hoffman opera and Maria's and Arthur's crisis. Thus, echoing "Henry's" review of this novel, I was disappointed that Maria's own journey remains "under a cloud" (as Darcourt put it), and the novel never really develops her character except as an unintended Guenevere and her final promise to "keep on trying." I'd have liked less rumination on the "magnanimous cuckold" theme--which seems strained after a while and never really reaches as deeply as possible into the pain of the Cornishes' crisis--and more development of Arthur's complex personality, perhaps Maria's research with the Portfolio (a story line pretty much dropped in Lyre), and other themes. Having said all this, however, I greatly enjoyed this novel, and the troublesome course toward the premiere of Hoffman's opera and the publication of Darcourt's life of Francis Cornish made for an erudite and pleasurable story. Davies' novels always provide a richer world than one finds in many stories, and it's a tribute to his gifts that he mixed so many rich worlds in this trilogy.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful, witty story of artistic academics
Review: The final part of the Cornish Trilogy. This is the story of an opera. Boring? Never. An unfinished opera by E.T.A. Hoffman is to be completed by an unlovable music student as a part of a bequest from a charitable foundation. From the beginning Davies' coruscating prose enchants and, as the twin plots begin to unfold, the richly eccentric characters begin to draw the reader in. Davies has a way of tying the most obscure facts together and making his huge knowledge accessible through humour and his immensely gifted, exhilarating, writing. If you have never read Robertson Davies you should start now. Start with The Lyre of Orpheus if you like, it is a superb book in it's own right, but it is a part of the outstanding "Cornish Trilogy" so you may prefer to begin with The Rebel Angels, the first in the trilogy. Personally, though, I would buy the trilogy right now.

Rating:
Summary: Fun, But The Weakest of the Trilogy
Review: The Lyre of Orpheus continues the story of the characters introduced in The Rebel Angels -- Maria and Arthur Cornish, Simon Darcourt, Clement Hollier, etc. I read the Cornish Trilogy straight through, and while I very much enjoyed it, I thought Davies ran out of gas somewhere in the Lyre of Orpheus. What I liked so much about the first two books was Davies' delving into the personalities of the characters; What's Bred in the Bone deals more with Francis Cornish, but goes very deeply into the forces that shaped his life. Davies has great insight into human nature. In The Lyre of Orpheus, the characters' motivations are not well explored. For example, we learn that a character's wife has an affair that results in pregnancy, and that the man, with apparently little ado, not only forgives his wife and treats her with undiminished devotion, but also continues to regard her lover as the dear friend he had been. Well, that's great, but uncommon, and Davies makes no attempt to explain this astounding level of generosity other than to analogize it to the Arthurian legend (but that was a legend). Similarly, we learn that Simon Darcourt has taken something of a new path in his life, but for motivation we are told little more than that, after taking a walk in woods, he has decided to view his life differently. Instead of helping us to relate to these characters, Davies spends a great deal of time educating us about how to produce an opera, evidently a great love of his. Opera fans will find this great fun, but it doesn't make for a great story. Finally, the analogizing to Arthurian legend of the characters' lives that permeates the entire work as a leitmotif becomes increasingly heavyhanded as time wears on, almost to the point of self-parody. In short, it's an entertaining read, but not up to the level of the first two parts of the trilogy.