Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A wonderful story told with wit, sensitivity, economy and insight. Dunstan Ramsay, war hero, loner, dreamer, bystander, is a character that will stay with me for a long time. Are we truly center stage in the performance of our own lives? Or are we characters, part real and part myth, in the life stories told to others? What matters more, hard fact or meaning? The world is magic; what we see and what we choose to believe. By the end I was torn about Dunny. He spent his life trying to justify his choices living according to traditional moral standards, and he pays a heavy price, wifeless and childless, and with his personal integrity only partially intact. He never truly stands in the spotlight, except in the reader's imagination.

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