Robertson Davies A Portrait in Mosaic

National bestseller and aGlobe and MailBest Book A fascinating, larger-than-life character, Davies left a treasure trove of stories about him when he died in 1995 expertly arranged here into a revealing portrait. From his student days onward, Robertson Davies made a huge impression on those around him. He was so clearly bound for a glorious future that some young friends even carefully preserved his letters. And everyone remembered their encounters with him. Later in life, as a world-famous writer, perhaps Canada's pre-eminent man of letters (who "looked like Jehovah"), he attracted people eager to meet him, who also vividly remembered their meetings. So when Val Ross set out in search of people's memories, she was faced with a wonderful embarrassment of riches. The one hundred or so contributors here range very widely. There are family memories, of course, and memories from colleagues in the academic world who knew him as a professor and the founding master of Massey College at the University of Toronto. Predictably, there are other major writers like Margaret Atwood and John Irving. Less predictably, there are people from the world of Hollywood, such as Norman Jewison and David Cronenberg (who remembers Davies on-set, peering through a camera lens as he researched his newest novel). And we even hear from his barber, and from his gardener, Theo Henkenhaf. Some speakers contribute just a lively paragraph; others several pages. Yet all of them, through the magic of Val Ross's art, help to create an intriguing, full-colour portrait of a complex man beloved by millions of readers around the world. From the Hardcover edition.

Val Ross was a renowned journalist and won a National Newspaper Award. She was highly respected throughout the publishing industry for her coverage of books and the people who create them. She was an arts reporter at The Globe and Mail and her first book, The Road to There: Mapmakers and Their Stories was nominated for many awards and won the Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children’s non-fiction. Val Ross passed away in 2008.

This is her long-awaited first adult book.


From the Hardcover edition.