Birds, Beasts and Relatives (Corfu Trilogy #2) by Gerald Durrell

 

Summary (from the publisher): The follow-up to My Family and Other Animals and the inspiration for The Durrells in Corfu: A naturalist’s memoir of his family’s time on a Greek island.

In the years before World War II, Gerald Durrell’s family left the gloomy shores of England for the sun-drenched island of Corfu. Against this picturesque backdrop, Durrell fondly recalls his family’s disorderly household and outrageous antics, including their interactions with locals of both human and animal varieties.
 
After a boyhood spent studying zoology and acquiring the island’s exotic insects, reptiles, birds, mammals, and sea creatures as pets, Durrell’s budding naturalism would later bloom into a passion for conservation that would last a lifetime.
 
Filled with clever observations, amusing anecdotes, and childlike wonder, Birds, Beasts and Relatives is half nature guide, half coming-of-age tale, and all charmingly funny memoir.

Review: This book is the follow up to the author's best-selling memoir about his family's time on the Greek island of Corfu. In the years before World War II, Gerald Durrell's family left England to stay on the sunny island of Corfu. In this witty account, Durrell recounts his family's adventures and disorderly lifestyle and a boyhood spent devoted to collecting and studying all the living creatures of the island. It reads almost like a novel and is quite a humorous account of the family's adventures. 

Rather than a chronological account, this book features stories that didn't make it into the first book. It's remarkable that one family could have so many comical encounters with the locals and thanks to young Gerald's frantic collecting of various bugs and animals. There are so many amusing scenes, like when young Gerry brings home a dead and rotting sea turtle and in the name of science dissects it on the family's patio. They return home to a horrible turtle crime scene and a horrendous odor throughout. Or when a trained bear follows him home and into the house. 

This one didn't capture my attention quite as well as the first in the trilogy. I don't know if this is because this is the second string of anecdotes about their time on Corfu or maybe just because it already felt very familiar. But for fans of the first in the series, this was equally as delightful in many ways and continued the exploits of the hapless Durrell family and their animal loving son. 

Stars: 4

Related Title: 

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