Fifth Business

First Edition. Fine in a near fine dust jacket, with slight wear to the edges. Blue lettered mustard cloth in pictorial dust jacket. 8vo. Overall, a lovely and fine copy.

Book one of Davies' lauded Deptford Trilogy. Davies drew on his interest in Jungian psychology to create Fifth Business, a novel that relies heavily on Davies' own experiences, his love of myth and magic, and his knowledge of small-town mores. The narrator, like Davies, is of immigrant Canadian background, with a father who runs the town paper. The book's characters act in roles that roughly correspond to Jungian archetypes according to Davies' belief in the predominance of spirit over the things of the world.

Davies built on the success of Fifth Business with two more novels: The Manticore (1972), a novel cast largely in the form of a Jungian analysis (for which he received that year's Governor General's Literary Award), and World of Wonders (1975). Together these three books came to be known as The Deptford Trilogy.