The (Mostly) Dead Writers Society Author in Residence program 2022
It was my belief that I had never read this final volume of the Cornish trilogy, but as I got started, I began to recognize details dimly here and there. I think I may have had a couple of false starts with it, but this time I have completed the task. That kind of record would lead you to believe that it's a poor book, wouldn't it? Nothing could be farther from the truth!
This book is one of the very last gifts from my mother before her death in a car accident in 1996. She and I were a book club of two, passing novels back and forth, discussing them over pots of coffee, often managing to talk about our own lives through the guise of fiction. I miss her still. And somehow, to read this book was to let go of her in some mysterious way. It has taken me almost 26 years, but I was finally ready.
This is a fitting culmination to the trilogy, giving the Rev. Simon Darcourt his proper place in the sun. The Cornish Foundation funds an opera and manages to “rehabilitate" the redoubtable Francis Cornish, star of the second book. Darcourt gets to resort to some academic skullduggery and leger de main, totally in keeping with his friend Francis' mercurial life.
As usual, Davies provides a plethora of quirky, yet intelligent cast members, quite literally in the case of the opera performers. His time in theatre is obvious when he describes the creative aspects of the job: recruiting singers, constructing sets, arranging schedules, conducting rehearsals, harassing libretticists, etc. No doubt during his time at Massey College he was also involved in the adjudication and bestowing of advanced academic degrees, like that of the talented and obnoxious Schnak.
There is a feeling among readers that the second book of a trilogy is the weakest, even being labelled “second book syndrome.” Davies puts paid to that theory—although all three are fine books, What's Bred in the Bone is easily my favourite of the three. Maybe it's my family's Loyalist stock, but I loved Francis Cornish from Blairlogie to England, to Europe and home again to Toronto. I'm a Virgo, making Mercury and his mischievous influence very attractive, something Francis and I have in common. Like Simon, I've been careful and clandestine about it (as Francis was when he bundled up his preliminary drawings for posterity).
An excellent and fitting conclusion to a masterful triptych.
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