I stopped reading Lawrence Durrell's book The Greek Islands after it irritated me for fairly trivial reasons -- he called an island dear to me "a bit of a slut." So, I had felt slightly guilty for failing to sample his purported literary masterwork, the Alexandria Quartet.Not any more!
http://www.themillions.com/2009/04/modern-library-revue-70-alexandria.html
Much as I suspected.
While elder brother Larry was launching his literary career, little brother Gerry, unwittingly anticipating the unschooling movement by several decades, was running barefoot on Corfu, working on his nature collection and, evidently, his comic prose style. (As often happens, it's the youngest sibling who gets the sense of humor.) My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell's memoir of his childhood years on Corfu, is a perfectly delicious book. I'm crossing my fingers that the two sequels are half as good.
For what it is worth, both of my boys are huge fans of "My Family and Other Animals." I think that is one of a number of books in our house that has been read to pieces.
ReplyDeleteOMG! A comment! Time to pay more attention around here.
ReplyDeleteI put a character from "My Family and Other Animals" into my Nano novel. It's the mother's scary black bathing suit.
ReplyDelete