Gerald Durrell was a British naturalist, writer, zookeeper, conservationist, and television presenter. In 1935 his family settled on the Greek island of Corfu, where they lived until 1939. The family included Gerald's mother, Louisa, his brothers, Lawrence and Leslie, and sister Margo. At that time, Lawrence or Larry was the eldest at twenty-three; Leslie was nineteen; Margo eighteen; and Gerald was ten.
Lawrence Durrell was also a noted novelist best known for his Alexandria Quartet, published between 1957 and 1960.
I decided to read
My Family and Other Animals after Susan Hill noted it as one of her favorite volumes of humorist literature in her book,
Howards End is on the Landing. The book was written in 1956 from the perspective of ten-year-old Gerald in 1935. It is filled with humorous anecdotes about him and his family most of which have to do with his obsession with observing and collecting the local fauna found in Corfu. These include stories of his collecting a mother scorpion and its babies in a match box that is opened by Larry resulting in scorpions loose all over the dining room; a pair of water snakes left in a bathtub when Leslie is about to bathe; discovering a group of trap-door spiders; bringing home a pair of baby magpies that grow into a pair of talking thieves who ransack Larry's room; a gruesome fight between a gecko and a mantis; and a large gull given to Gerry by a convict which is vicious and loves to bite hands. There are also many funny episodes involving the family and the locals...all of this was quite enjoyable.
This book is the first in a trilogy about the family's life on Corfu. The others are
Birds, Beasts, and Relatives and
The Garden of the Gods. At some point, I would also like to read these. I have also added the novels of Lawrence as possible reads in the future. I also discovered that the Corfu books were made into a
TV series called the Durrells in Corfu that I now want to watch!
