Description

Durrellis amusing and warm My Family and Other Animals (1957) started a group of recollections of his life growing up with a somewhat dotty family the overbearing and omniscient Larry; the caring and caring siblings, Margot and Leslie; and, obviously, the overloaded and individual Mom about the island of Corfu in the 1930s, whenever a pound might purchase an apartment and life was performed as a number of riotously large (and occasionally reduced) activities. But what shines through these five vignettes may be the writer's involvement with and enormous love for creatures in most their varieties. From fish to chicken, from lizards to small water bugs (daphnia), Durrellis attention is severe and his writing is sour. You can read this book for the humor alone (for he did understand his household as some uncommon and rarefied variety), but between your lines you can detect the ingredients of a global-class naturalist and a developed and interesting author.