SOURCE: "Mind, Body and Dr. Hullah," in The New York Times Book Review, February 5, 1995, pp. 1, 23.

[Colegate is an English novelist and critic. In the review below, she praises Davies's handling of character and first-person narration in The Cunning Man.]

Robertson Davies's new novel is as substantial and as entertaining as any he has written. The Cunning Man enlarges joyously on many of his familiar themes; the one that underlies all the others is his belief that religion and science, poetry and medicine, theater and psychoanalysis have a kind of meeting place where no one is quite sufficient without the others. The liveliest dogs in all those fields, whether they recognize it or not, may be barking up the same tree. Thus, a Toronto physician, Dr. Jonathan Hullah, known to some of his friends as the Cunning Man, comes to realize that this is the belief that underlies his...