SOURCE: "Toronto Blessings," in New Statesman & Society, Vol. 8, No. 347, April 7, 1995, p. 56.

[In the following mixed review of The Cunning Man, Kaveney argues that while Davies may be reactionary in his ideological orientation, he has an "exemplary sense" of how "ordinary people" experience and deal with pity and terror.]

It would be easy to dislike Robertson Davies. He is the sort of Tory anarchist whose tolerance of what he calls the poor, the minorities, has more to do with smug urbanity than ethics. Through his narrators, he shows off recondite knowledge in the humanities, medicine and theology for longer than he deigns to tell what might be called a story. His characterisation is displayed by affluent white men (occasionally women) who sit around discussing how fortunate and gifted they are. And yet …

Davies' 11 novels display a sense of the workings of the world that justifies that sense of his...