Word: angellic
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Francis Cornish is another one of those great Davies characters, a child of the old world lost in the new. Cornish is dead before the book begins and his story is told by the Daimon Maimas and the Recording Angel, two medieval creatures who have overseen his life. Under their influence, Cornish has lead a decidedly bizarre existence. His parents essentially abandon him at the beginning of this century to be raised in a miniscule Canadian town by his Catholic great aunt who bootlegs Catholicism to him against the wishes of his resolutely Anglican father...
...other aspect of Davies' novel falls flat. In The Rebel Angels Davies populates the novel with the unseen but mysterious forces of medieval angels. But in What's Bred in the Bone Davies brings them to life. The Daimon Maimas and the Recording Angel narrate the novel. This little conceit provides the structural premise of the book, and it wilts fast...
...explain. His conceit is to posit that Maimas and the Recording Angel have guided Cornish through his life in an effort to make him great. So when Cornish's nephew calls upon them in jest, they appear (not to the nephew of course, only to the reader) to tell the tale. Why does Davies do this? Well, it's kind of clever and amusing at first. And the use of these two characters could be forgiven if they weren't used in such an amateurish way. Throughout the novel they interrupt every once in a while to explain the most...
...name was Aniello Dellacroce, which in Italian means "little lamb of the cross," and he took pleasure in killing people. "He likes to peer into a victim's face, like some kind of dark angel, at the moment of death," a federal agent once said of the Mafia chieftain. As underboss of the Gambino clan, the most powerful of New York's five families, he was a member and chief enforcer of "the Commission," the 11-member council that reputedly oversees organized crime around the U.S. Occasionally disguised as a priest under the alias of Father O'Neill, a play...
...prize for 'best stage presence' goes to David Angel's Lucio, arguably the best part in the play. Angelo plays with more camp than a world jamboree and his "Hail, Virgin" greeting of Isabella proves the comic highlight of the evening...