Picked it up from a friend’s house. Didn’t return it. It’s been 11 years now.
This book isn’t too musty. It smells of my house and of a small island in Greece, where I believe innocence still walks the hills, where mad englishmen write bad poetry after getting drunk and stolid women go down to the bazaars in search of fresh fruit.
Of Corfu and the Flavoured Villas - (1935 -39)
Gerald Durrel has enchanted readers for decades now with his bittersweet experiences with animals, some a part of his family. This is one of the first in his autobiographical series of novels wherein we grow to understand a young Gerald and his love for animals. Not to mention family and a few other lunatics. This is a memoir about a very young Gerald and his family at Corfu, in Greece. Surrounded by a plethora of madcaps and of course loads and loads of animals. What is interesting firstly is the style. When Durrel writes as an 8 year old, you feel as if an 8 year old is the one making conversation with you.
The world ceases to make sense and if you put the book down for even a second, and breathe trying to take on the reality of the world around you, you can’t. It’s still the magical world of Corfu that you see and want to be there with them. So you look down at the book and start the fantasy again.
It’s as much a novel about coming of age as it is about animals. Comparisons might be drawn to Cronin’s ’A Song of Sixpence’, but in Cronin the coming of age was full of disturbances, hardship, loss and compensation. Durrel doesn’t dwelve in all of that. His world is like the sun in Corfu, warm, bright, cheery and with each season comes a new flavored villa and new animals.
No tears. No young boy made to struggle and face industrial hardship. You are not likely to find a young David Abbot here, not even a Spencer but a Durrel of immense innocent wisdom.
And what animals. Ulysses the owl. Puke and Widdle the dogs. Quasimodo, the pigeon. Not to mention geckos, scorpions, magenpies, toads, butterflies and bats too. Throw in a few english eccentricities and you have the biggest blockbuster of the year.
One that will stay with you forever.
Pick it up be delighted.
It looks great on the shelf too.