{stand alone, non-fiction, biography}(2017)

I remember that I liked My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell when we read it decades ago in school but I don't remember much more than the ambiance of a sun-drenched childhood that resonated with mine and I haven't seen the recent television adaptation. I like discovering the real story behind the 'story' and took a book bullet for this book.

My Family and Other Animals described the time, just before WWII broke out, that Gerald and his family moved from England to Corfu for a couple of years when he - the youngest of the family - was 10 years old. Apparently Prospero's Cell by Lawrence Durrell, his oldest brother who was then 23 years old and married, is about the same time period but told from his perspective and (I get the impression that) both stories have differences and embellishments. Haag (the foreword says that he knew Lawrence and had met Gerald and Margo) has put together this account, accompanied by photos supplied by the family, of what actually happened before the family had to move back to England as the second world war broke out.

Gerald's narrative was written (when he was an adult) from the perspective of the boy he had been and he omitted, glossed over or embellished some things (and, apparently, Lawrence did something similar) one of which was the reason for the move to Corfu and another was the reason that there was no father around. The reason was that Lawrence Durrell senior (called, irritatingly troughout the first part of the book - after which he was never mentioned - Lawrence Samuel even though his son, Lawrence George, was called Larry throughout the book) had died in India when Gerald was a baby so the family moved to England (although both Louisa and Lawrence senior had been born in India as had all their children) where they didn't really settle down.

The first part of the book, dealing with Lawrence and Louisa's early years of marriage and life moving around India (before the division of the country), was interesting and entertaining as was the move to England and then to Corfu but as the book goes on it gets somewhat disjointed. There were a lot of interesting details but they weren't always connected to each other. Haag includes lots of quotes from many sources; from Gerald's and Larry's books (I infer), Gerald's unpublished jottings, from their sister Margo (who also wrote a book), from cousins, friends, acquaintances ... Unfortunately, he doesn't say where many of the quotes are from, who he is quoting (I assume one of the siblings) or mark where the quote starts or ends which makes it quite confusing.

Towards the end of the book it gets more haphazard and didn't flow well for me; it reads more like a string of explanations of anecdotes, some of which are just passages plonked down on the page with seemingly no connection to anything else. Gerald's first wife appears as a fait accompli with no introduction or explanation but at least she gets a half sentence when she leaves the story. By the end of it, it felt more like I was reading Haag's research notes and it was a bit dry; it was as though the author did a good job of researching it and got the first part in decent shape but then ...

This is a fairly short book but wasn't a quick read for me as the ending bogged down rather. I feel that reading it as an e-book did it further disservice as captions to photographs showed up on the next page and there were a lot of spaces after illustrations which looked like the end of chapters (of which there are only eight plus an epilogue); if you do decide to read it a physical copy would probably work better. Do be warned; Larry and friends liked to sea and sun bathe naked and there are a couple of photographs in the book. I suspect that this book would probably work better as a companion book with one of the brothers' Corfu novels (Gerald eventually wrote three, dubbed The Corfu Trilogy) or the TV adaptation fresh in mind but I don't feel that it stands well by itself.

November 2021
3 stars ( )

Despite the wonderful TV adaptation’s fittingly poignant conclusion, I was still suffering a severe case of Durrells withdrawal when Michael Haag’s The Durrells of Corfu popped up in my library recommendations list. Yes please… just what I needed.

I found Haag’s admiring yet balanced recounting of the real Louisa Durrell’s marriage in India and the experiences there that shaped her and her children absolutely fascinating. So too, learning what really motivated their move from England to Corfu much later, along with the various disparities between fact and both Gerald and Lawrence Durrell’s published fiction.

But what really elevates this particular non-fiction narrative to evocative and atmospheric is just how frequently Haag allows the family members (two of whom were authors) and those who knew them well (the literati of the time) to simply speak for themselves. He does this with timely and perceptive inline insertion of quotes from unpublished journals, letters and memoirs. Read full review: https://www.bookloverbookreviews.com/2021/06/the-durrells-of-corfu-michael-haag-... ( )

The Durrell's are one of those well know families that have permeated the British literary culture. There is Lawrence Durrell whose most famous work is The Alexandria Quartet. Then there is Gerald Durrell, founder of the world-renowned Jersey Zoo and author of many books, including My Family and Other Animals, about growing up with animals in the homes in Corfu. The TV series that is proving so popular is loosed based on My Family and Other Animals and the others in the Corfu Trilogy and the books themselves are loosely based on the real-life events that took place when they were living there.

In this book Michael Haag has gone behind the literary curtains to see what really happened, The children were all born in India, to Lawrence and Louise Durrell. Lawrence Durrell was a civil engineer responsible for building some of the railways of India. He died of a brain haemorrhage in 1928, and Louisa and the Leslie, Margo and Gerald moved back to London. They stayed there for a short while before relocating to Bournemouth. By 1935 they had been persuaded to move to Corfu by the eldest Lawrence, who was living there with his wife. It was here that the interest that Gerald had in all thing animals became an obsession. It was aided by his friendship with Theodore Stephanides, a Greek doctor, scientist, poet, philosopher, who nurtured his passion for animals. At the outbreak of war in 1939, they all moved back to the UK.

It is an enjoyable book to read about their slightly chaotic family life in Corfu, full of personal anecdotes and details gleaned from personal documents to fill in the gaps of the stories from the books. He tells the stories of Louisa, Leslie and Margo, the family members often in the shadow of there more famous family members. This unconventional upbringing gave us two world-famous authors, though I did have a wry smile that Gerald Durrell was a best selling author before his more literary brother, Lawrence. Even though my wife met Gerald Durrell once, and we have a lot of his books around the house, I have never read any of them! Something that I am intending on rectifying very soon. ( )

Haag gives an excellent balance between a highly readable (and fun) companion to the ITV series The Durrells and a detailed biographical study of the family's years on Corfu. I came to this mainly as a supplement to the biographies of the Durrell brothers, and in this Haag provides much new information and corrections to widespread errors, but I also simply enjoyed reading the book. His prose is conversation even while precise, and the narrative is exciting on its own.

For full disclosure, I'm also biased – I edited two of the books to which he refers several times, [a:Lawrence Durrell|8166|Lawrence Durrell|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1463722118p2/8166.jpg]'s [b:Panic Spring|3778100|Panic Spring|Lawrence Durrell|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1341996926s/3778100.jpg|3822165] and [b:Pied Piper of Lovers|4627985|Pied Piper of Lovers|Lawrence Durrell|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1409029770s/4627985.jpg|4677995], the latter being his semi-autobiographical novel about his childhood in India and teen years in England, the former a pseudonymous novel written while he was on Corfu during the period depicted in Gerald's [b:My Family and Other Animals|48132|My Family and Other Animals (Corfu Trilogy, #1)|Gerald Durrell|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327885239s/48132.jpg|76682]. I enjoyed Haag's perspective on these texts and his correctives and additions to the biographical history of the family.

If you've enjoyed the television series, this is a perfect companion, but it is just as enjoyable for any reader of either Durrell brother's books. ( )

The real life story of the multi talented Durrell family, from India to corfu and all that came after. As fascinating as the rose tinted accounts given by Gerald Durrell in his classic "My family and other animals" and the recent TV series, this book reveals other more sobering truths about a challenged, somewhat dysfunctional family. ( )