Word: francises
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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The tale begins with an impasse. The man who is trying to write the life of the late Francis Chegwidden Cornish, a distinguished art collector and connoisseur, finds himself stymied. It is bad enough that he has turned up hints of fakery in Cornish's long and otherwise exemplary career...
The inquirer will never know, but Davies' readers are luckier. Two unearthly spirits appear bearing privileged information. One is the Lesser Zadkiel, an assistant to the Recording Angel; the other is a daimon called Maimas, who steered Francis Cornish through his existence. Maimas insists that he was nothing so wimpish...
Francis' history thus unfolds from the leisurely perspective of eternity, with frequent interruptions from the two immortals guiding the tour. Given this long view, episodes tend to cluster into something resembling a preordained pattern. Born in a backwater village in eastern Canada, Francis had his maternal grandfather to thank for...
By the time he goes to Oxford, in the early 1930s, to polish off his Canadian education, Francis has been honed into a practical, tightfisted young man who is also a thoroughgoing romantic about art. He meets Tancred Saraceni, the world's foremost restorer of old masterpieces, and confesses a...
Recognition at home was slower in coming. "We Canadians," Davies told TIME Ottawa Bureau Chief Peter Stoler, "are not enthusiasts about our own people." That is no longer true, at least in his case. What's Bred in the Bone has garnered raves from Canadian reviewers. Which seems fitting, since...