Novel: World of Wonders

Overview
World of Wonders closes Robertson Davies's Deptford Trilogy by giving voice to Magnus Eisengrim, the stage magician whose public persona masks a battered and powerfully resourceful past. The narrative follows Magnus from an obscure provincial childhood to a hard-won international career, tracing how trauma, apprenticeship and relentless craft forged a performer able to command illusion and narrative alike. The book reads as a careful excavation of identity, showing how self-invention becomes both armour and art.
Davies blends biographical realism with theatrical flair, letting the mechanics of magic stand in for broader questions about truth, memory and redemption. The result is both a vivid life story and a meditation on the ethical and psychological costs of becoming an actor of any kind , on stage, in private, or in history.

Structure and Narrative
The tale is delivered as an extended first-person recollection: Magnus speaks at length, reconstructing formative episodes and explaining the practical, technical and moral side of his craft. The conversational, often dryly humorous voice alternates with luminous, cinematic passages that show Davies's pleasure in theatrical detail and the mechanics behind sleight of hand.
Framing episodes tie Magnus's narrative to the larger Deptford universe, allowing earlier mysteries and character arcs to be reframed from his perspective. The storytelling method emphasizes the art of narration itself: what is omitted, what is staged, and how an account can be shaped to protect or to reveal.

Plot Summary
Born Paul Dempster, the boy who becomes Magnus endures a harsh, precarious childhood in rural Ontario. Early dislocations and cruel treatment push him toward itinerant life; he learns the demands and humiliations of show business through a succession of teachers, tough rehearsals and the rough commerce of travelling performance. Each apprenticeship hones not only technical skill but a philosophy of control , control of audience attention, of narrative pacing, and ultimately of the self he presents to the world.
Magnus's rise is neither mythic nor effortless. He constructs a persona methodically, borrowing, adapting and concealing. The narrative follows his apprenticeship with practical detail about props and routines, shifts into accounts of relationships and losses, and culminates in his establishment as an international performer whose signature illusions carry echoes of private wounds. The chronology is less a simple climb than a series of reinventions; how he stages his life becomes as important as any single triumph.

Themes and Motifs
Illusion functions on multiple levels: as entertainment, as a survival strategy, and as a metaphor for the self. Davies probes the ethics of deception , when is illusion harmless artistry, and when is it a way to evade responsibility or memory? Magnus's confessions insist that performance can be a form of heroic labour, but also acknowledge the loneliness and moral ambiguity that attend self-fashioning.
Storytelling and myth-making recur alongside precise technical descriptions of magic. Davies applies his interest in Jungian symbolism and religious imagery to the magician's repertoire, suggesting that acts of transformation onstage resonate with deeper psychic transformations. Memory, trauma and forgiveness weave through the book, so that the finale feels like both an explanation and a reconciliation.

Style and Significance
Davies writes with wit, erudition and a showman's sense of timing. Scenes of rehearsals, wardrobe and backstage routine are rendered with affectionate specificity, while the philosophical and psychological reflections remain grounded in character. The prose shifts easily between anecdote and analysis, comedy and melancholy, mirroring the dual nature of the performer's life.
As the final chapter of the Deptford Trilogy, World of Wonders furnishes a compassionate, complex portrait of a survivor who turns concealment into craft. It reframes previous events in the series and leaves a lingering question about the costs and consolations of reinvention, making the novel both a satisfying conclusion and a standalone study of art, identity and the illusions people live by.