“There is a pleasure sure, In being mad, which none but
madmen know,” Dryden.
And so opens My Family and Other
Animals, Gerald Durrell’s
most well known book. Its contents reflect its title. The
fictionalized account of the young author’s pre- World War
Two
childhood on Corfu spends equal time on his eccentric
but likeable family, and the charming animals that the ten
year old Gerald finds, saves, captures and adopts.
Gerald, at ten, is the narrator and its through his eyes
that the audience first sees the island appearing out of
the crystal blue sea. Its through his child’s perspective
that you see his not-yet-so-famous elder
brother, novelist
Lawrence Durrell (Larry), his hunting-mad, sail boat
building other brother (Leslie), his clothing fixated, diet
expert teenage sister Margo (and her various suitors), and
of course, the manager, leader, scapegoat of the mis-
matched crew, his mother (Mother).
For the animal enthusiast, a variety of specimens crawl,
fly, wiggle, or decompose throughout the pages. Turtles,
magpies (magenpies), snakes, geckos, albatrosses (or maybe
just very big gulls) captivate Gerald and the reader, and
play no small role in driving the family around a few more
bends.
The book is separated into three sections, for each of the
villas that the family moved to on the small island, but
the sense one has when reading it, is one of experiencing an endless,
magical summer – the life of the creatures, the youth of
the narrator, and endless discoveries and adventures of the
family.
Opening this book is like escaping into friendly warmth of
your childhood, had it been filled with characters and
events as entertaining as Gerald’s. Once, when he was all
grown up, old even, in poor health, with many of the family
gone, he said, “If I had the craft of Merlin, I would give
every child the gift of my childhood.” In this book, he
has.