Penguin Books Fifth Business - The Deptford Trilogy 第五事業 戴普特津三部曲

“The Deptford Trilogy boldly commingles the extraordinary and the everyday, at times attaining what Davies once called, in talking about melodrama, ‘the compelling immediacy of a dream.” — Michael Dirda

 

The Modern Library judged “Fifth Business” 40th on its “readers’ list” of the 100 best novels of the 20th century. “Fifth Business” is the opening shot in the “Deptford Trilogy,” which fills 875 pages. The book stands alone as a remarkable story told by a rational man who discovers that the marvelous is only another aspect of the real.

 

What is “fifth business”? Those roles which, being neither those of hero nor Heroine, Confidante nor Villain, but which were none the less essential to bring about the Recognition or the denouement were called the Fifth Business in drama and Opera companies organized according to the old style; the player who acted these parts was often referred to as Fifth Business. You’ve seen him in your own life: the guy who shows up one night and drops in your ear an insight you desperately need, the woman whose small act of kindness turns you in a new direction.

 

Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I, decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man’s land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him. His apparently innocent involvement in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball or the teaching of card tricks to a small boy in the end proves neither innocent nor innocuous.

 

‘Fifth Business' is not just Ramsey’s memoir. In 272 brisk pages, it covers World War I, sex and love in the 1920s, investment strategies before the Crash of 1929, and a magic trick that spawns a career. It’s a psychological thriller, and much more. It begins in the now and opens into the extraordinary. In a deceptive way, it’s a study of life itself — the large panorama, seen whole, encompassing both daily life and the realm of marvels. And that is why, for readers who like books that work on several levels, this is a completely addictive novel.

 

Features

• Edition : -
• Binding : Paperback
• ISBN : 9780141186153
• Publication Date : 2001/1/1

 

Materials & Care

• Imported