My Family and Other Animals (Corfu Trilogy #1) by Gerald Durrell

 

Summary (from the publisher): This book is an autobiographical account of five years in the childhood of naturalist Gerald Durrell when he lived with his family lived on the island of Corfu. Apart from Gerald (the youngest) and Larry (Lawrence Durrell, the novelist), the family comprised their widowed mother, the gun-mad Leslie, and diet-obsessed sister Margo together with Roger the dog. The procession of animals includes toads, and tortoises, bats and butterflies scorpions and geckos, ladybirds, glow-worms, octopuses and rose-beetles, Ulysses, the Scops owl, Quasimodo the pigeon, the puppies Widdle and Puke, and of course the magpies. The family is fiercely protected by their taxi-driver friend Spiro, and Gerald is mentored by the polymath Dr Theodore Stephanides who provides his education in natural history.

Review: This entertaining memoir tells the story of the five years author Gerald Durrell spent on the island of Corfu with his family as a child. The eccentric family included Gerry the youngest, Larry the novelist, gun-crazy Leslie, pimple covered sister Margo, their widowed mother, and an ongoing procession of animals. It's little surprise to learn that young Gerry grew up to be a naturalist because the vast majority of his time and narration in this book is devoted to building his prodigious animal collection. Filled with tongue-in-cheek humor and delightful outdoor exploits, this is an entertaining coming of age/travel memoir. 

What a delightful memoir! Irreverent and eccentric, the Durrell family decides quite off the cuff to travel to Corfu and aimlessly spend their days in various hobbies and social pursuits. Remembered through the lens of a child, much of this book feels ethereal: "Gradually the magic of the island settled over us as gently and clingingly as pollen. Each day had a tranquility, a timelessness, about it, so that you wished it would never end. But then the dark skin of night would peel off and there would be a fresh day waiting for us, glossy and colourful as a child's transfer and with the same tinge of unreality" (46). In some ways, although purportedly a memoir, this reads like a novel that Gerry has written based on this childhood period.

While the absent father has passed away and is never referenced, he clearly left the family fairly well off and able to afford a life of leisure. Gerry has such a carefree lifestyle. While ostensibly engaged by a tutor, in reality much of his time is spent out of doors collecting turtles, pigeons, geckos, bats, butterflies, gulls, magpies, snakes, and other beasts. Much of the humor of this book results from mishaps of various animals and creatures causing trouble or getting loose in the family's home. 

Durrell describes his world in such a comical and entertaining way, such as when he and his mother and sister were inadvertently caught up in the swell of a local crowd during a festival, "I was caught firmly between five fat peasant women, who pressed on my like cushions and exuded sweat and garlic, while Mother was hopelessly entangled between two of the enormous Albanian shepherds" (122). Or like the way describes two massive toads he finds by saying, "They squatted there like two obese, leprous Buddhas, peering at me and gulping in the guilty way that toads have. Holding one in each hand, it was like handling two flaccid, leathery balloons, and the toads blinked their fine golden filigreed eyes at me, and settled themselves more comfortably on my fingers, gazing at me trustfully, their wide, thick-lipped mouths seeming to spread in embarrassed and uncertain grins. I was delighted with them, and so excited at their discovery that I felt I must immediately share them with someone, or I would burst with suppressed joy" (252). 

This book made me laugh aloud multiple times. Overall, it is lighthearted about a child's experiences and a child's concerns, so nothing feels too heavy or deep. His depiction of his family was highly entertaining as he busily goes about adding to their woes with his menagerie of creatures. Beautiful depiction of a world long past, when children could wander about outside all day long without a care in the world.

Stars: 4