I'll hazard that this is because David, telling this in the form of his analytic journey, is focusing on the people of his past, not the places. Indeed, places and locations are much less prominent in The Manticore than they were in Fifth Business. The village is not depicted here so much as mentioned as a milieu for some of David's boyhood experiences with his grandfather and his ever-present nanny/housekeeper/maternal figure, Netty. Though this is the "Deptford trilogy," the return to Deptford in this book is brief and not all that notable. The Manticore gives David his own history, fleshing him out as a person, and also gives him his own voice, one quite distinct from Ramsay's. However, this is not just a retelling of Fifth Business after all, David was a minor player in that book, barely on the reader's radar and notable only, really, because he happens to be Boy's son. Probably the most interesting differences are David's thoughts on Ramsay himself, of course, as well as how David perceives his father's character. The events intersect tangentially with those of Fifth Business, providing at times a different perspective on characters familiar from the first book. It allows Davies to depart from some of the entrenched conventions of the modern novel, rendering David's narration in the form of journal-like entries interspersed with script-like dialogue between himself and Dr. The analysis is both more and less than a framing device. Partly an exploration of the psychology of Jung and partly a work of biographical fiction akin to Fifth Business, The Manticore is a journey into David's past and into his psyche. At the end of Fifth Business, Boy dies, and now David has gone to Zurich seeking the wisdom of a Jungian analyst to make sense of his behaviour since his father's death. Instead, this is the story of David Staunton, the son of Dunstan's lifelong frenemy, Boy Staunton. Dunstan Ramsay, that incorrigible saint-chasing old man who provided the heart and soul and voice of Fifth Business, is no longer our narrator.
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