In The Rebel Angels, morality and hilarity contribute in about equal parts to a story of theft and murder set in the College of St. John and the Holy Ghost (Spook, to its familiars) on the campus of a large Canadian university. Careful readers of Davies will not be surprised by the simplicity of the story-line, the adept management of narrative structure, the lively characterisation, the re-emergence of familiar themes, the acerbic commentary on academic and other forms of life, and the flurry of esoteric information. (p. 578)
The narrative takes the form of two linked first-person accounts, one by Simon Darcourt and one by Maria Theotoky, alternating through the novel…. The distinction between them is so neat as to appear almost over-contrived, yet is is thematically appropriate as well as structurally useful, for each of them represents a psychic element of the other which must be reckoned with. Darcourt [an Anglican priest] must come to terms with his physical self, particularly in the form of erotic love and a tendency to put on weight. Maria, whom he loves, must come to terms with her Gypsy inheritance while living in a gadje (non-Gypsy) society, represented at its best by Darcourt.
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