Oakmont Book Group The Oakmont Book Group is comprised of students and teachers who meet regularly to discuss a shared reading. The Group, through consensus, selects a book to read and then meets over a pot-luck to discuss the book. The selection for our November reading is Fifth Business by Roberson Davies. Despite his established reputation in Canada, Robertson Davies was little known to U.S. readers and reviewers when Fifth Business was published in 1970. The American reception was exuberant, propelling the novel to bestseller lists in both the U.S. and Canada. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt described it in the New York Times as "a marvelously enigmatic novel . . . elegantly written and driven by irresistible narrative. One thinks of The Magic Mountain and The French Lieutenant's Woman, although Mr. Davies hardly needs Thomas Mann and John Fowles to prop him up." Fifth Business, the first book in Davies' Deptford Trilogy, focuses on Dunstan Ramsay, a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him. His apparently innocent involvement in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball or the teaching of card tricks to a small boy in the end prove neither innocent nor innocuous. Myth, magic, and miracles, freaks, saints, and devils--such is the world of wonders unleashed by a simple snowball thrown in the village of Deptford in 1908. As Michiko Kakutani wrote in the New York Times, Davies "has created a rich oeuvre of densely plotted, highly symbolic novels that not only function as superbly funny entertainments but also give the reader, in his character's words, a deeper kind of pleasure— delight, awe, religious intimations, a fine sense of the past, and of the boundless depth and variety of life." Penguin Classics, the publisher, provides several questions for discussion, and if you'd like to consider them as you read Fifth Business, you can find them here. Our discussion will be December 8th at 2:00 p.m. in the Guidance Center conference room. We decided on an after school meeting rather than an evening meeting because of a sense that more people would be able to come at that time. Previous Book Group Selections have included: The Shining A Confederacy of Dunces A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius The Golden Compass A Christmas Carol Carmilla Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows The History of Love The Road Everything is Illuminated Under the Tuscan Sun Frankenstein I am the Messenger The Kite Runner The Dante Club Dracula All Oakmont students and faculty are welcome to join the Book Group for enjoyable book discussion and tasty food. For more information, please contact Mr. Anderson.