The first book in the Salterton trilogy. Very amusing satire about an amateur theater group. I found the character of Hector Mackilwraith particularly funny with his approach to teaching:

"It was in dealing with stupid pupils that his wit was shown. A dunce, who had done nothing right, would not receive a mark of Zero from him, for Hector would geld the unhappy wretch of marks not only for arriving at a wrong solution, but for arriving at it by a wrong method. It was thus possible to announce to the class that the dunce had been awarded minus thirty-seven out of a possible hundred marks; such announcements could not be made more than two or three times a year, but they always brought a good laugh. And that laugh, it must be said, was not vaingloriously desired by Hector as a tribute to himself, but only in order that it might spur the dunce on to greater mathematical effort. That it never did so was one of the puzzles which life brought to Hector, for he was convinced of the effectiveness of ridicule in making stupid boys and girls intelligent."

Haven't we all suffered from a teacher like this? Therefore, it is satisfying to see the effects of ridicule upon Hector in his stupidity at romance at the end of the book! Just enough for a comeuppance, not too much... ( )

It’s funny how sometimes you read a book and it just leaves your head the moment you put it down, and other times books just stay with you. This is somewhere in between, though it’s hard to say since it’s probably been 25 years between readings. I had a hankering to read Davies, maybe because I am away from Canada and Davies writes so quintessentially Canadian. Salterton is an academic town somewhere in Ontario, and its denizens are drab, quirky, and everything in between, just as you’d expect to find in any Canadian town. The book was written in the ‘50s, though Davies omits any references to politics or technology so it really is timeless, and could take place anytime in the 20th or 21st centuries. A disparate group of players comes together to mount a production of The Tempest, and what ensues is a complicated web of love and self-aggrandizement, people managing their lives with varying degrees of success. I’d forgotten what a narrative master Davies was, changing perspectives seamlessly between the characters and developing each one so that the reader gets a better picture of the various subtexts and mini-dramas. Every character is utterly human, which is actually very hard to pull off. ( )

I first came across this author in high school studying [b:Fifth Business|74406|Fifth Business (The Deptford Trilogy, #1)|Robertson Davies|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1170852646l/74406._SY75_.jpg|603433], and while I don't regard any of his books as fondly as that novel, which has gone on to be one of my favourites, I like his line of work enough that I felt the need to reread everything of his in chronological order. [b:Tempest-Tost|347358|Tempest-Tost (Salterton Trilogy, #1)|Robertson Davies|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1290198660l/347358._SY75_.jpg|1967443], the first of the Salterton trilogy, has an amateur theatre company attempt to put on a production of The Tempest in the fictitious Ontario city of Salterton (which if I recall correctly is an analog of Kingston), though Griselda, who has been cast as Ariel, attracts attention, and not necessarily of the right sort. No less than three of her colleagues are infatuated with her: the rakish soldier Roger Tasset, the diffident assistant director Solly Bridgetower, and the repressed math teacher Hector Mackilwraith.

This being a debut novel, it's not entirely without its issues; compared to most of the wider Davies oeuvre, the Deptford trilogy especially, the characters are kind of dry. It feels like this is mostly by design; there's a sort of neo-Victorian bent to their views and mannerisms, a sort of conservatism that probably wouldn't seem out of place in 19th-century literature. I was always fascinated by how the POV characters saw everyone else; I like how perspective in this book was utilized in such a way that it shows the foibles and hypocrisies of everyone else, though it isn't always reliable, as it is sometimes coloured by rivalry; for example, Freddy and Griselda both have rich inner lives but each thinks the other is a vacuous halfwit.

This narrative device was so effective, in fact, that I found viewpoint characters were more interesting when seen through the eyes of someone else, but this didn't ruin the book for me. Perhaps this could've been ameliorated if Salterton had a stronger presence, like how the eponymous village of the Deptford trilogy seems like a living entity that exists to keep its protagonists down, but at least the cast is varied enough to keep my attention. I especially liked Valentine Rich, she's easily the most reasonable person in the entire book, and I liked seeing her apply professional direction to amateur theatre.

Perhaps rereading the rest of his books will prove me wrong, but it feels like Davies' writing is almost fully formed; I find his turn of phrase warm, and like this book's characters, almost anachronistic, though this decided anachronism fits Salterton's WASP culture quite nicely. I also quite liked his depiction of community theatre, on account of it being mostly true to my experiences in the performing arts; a great deal of internal squabbling that might surprise outsiders, actors attempting to "improve" scenes and being told why such changes wouldn't work, a shared love of food, I can assure you that I've observed or heard of such things myself in amateur theatre.

Though I find Davies' storytelling ability isn't quite there at this stage of his literary career, his knack for writing believable and entertaining conversations is there, to the point where I found the most entertaining moments were often just people talking. There's also an effervescent love of theatre that really comes through in the book's depiction of an amateur production, which serves to ground the story in its comic context, and though I find that Davies would go on to make more thoughtful meditations on the arts, Tempest-Tost is still a rather entertaining debut that I'd gladly reread again, and I'll be interested to see how well the rest of the Salterton trilogy holds up. ( )

El Teatro Joven de Salterton, una compañía amateur, va a poner en marcha una representación de La tempestad de Shakespeare en los bellos jardines de St. Agnes, la vetusta y extravagante residencia de George Alexander Webster y sus hijas adolescentes, Griselda y Freddy. Los preparativos de la obra revolucionan la casa, a sus moradores y a cuantos participan en ella, y están a punto de llevar a la locura al hasta entonces taciturno profesor Hector Mackilwraith, que tras conseguir un papel en la obra se enamora, sin ser correspondido, de la joven Griselda. Fruto de su larga experiencia teatral, la primera novela que escribió Robertson Davies, y que abre la Trilogía de Salterton, es un divertido homenaje a las grandezas y miserias de los escenarios.

As someone who's dabbled in theater, the characters of this book Ar immediately recognizable. Davies does a lovely job of painting a quaint community that has a hilarious but realistic dark under current. ( )