And, finally, The Alexandria Quartet draws to an end. This book is the first one to move forward chronologically in a substantive way-- while the other occur before World War II, in this one the war is underway (not, as the back cover claims, yet over). We get to revisit all the characters we came to meet in the first three books and see how they have grown and changed as a result of those events, plus those of the war. It's interesting: Durrell says the quartet was his study of love, and each book has had a different thing to say about it. Justine has a very romantic notion of it, full of grand affairs and mad passions and overblown ideas. In Balthazar, we seem to learn that love is mostly based upon lies, but it can still exist, just not in the way we thought we knew. And then in Mountolive, all love is a sham on every level: most of the relationships here are for political or social reasons, not romantic ones. But Clea takes us right back where we began, as the narrator (now allowed to use his name) is able to come to terms with the events of the series thanks to his love affair with Clea, the bisexual artist. This and many other plot threads of the series are tied up in fine form, as all of the characters ultimately come to a fitting end, and the truths (maybe) are finally revealed. Durrell's prose is as fantastic, his descriptions as evocative, and his insights as keen as ever. A strong end to a strong series, whose only fault was the honestly somewhat superfluous metafictional aspects.

3646. Clea a novel by Lawrence Durrell (read 4 Nov 2002) This is the final volume of The Alexandria Quartet. Durrell is a great prose writer and one can not but be impressed by the word pictures he paints of Alexandrian and Egyptian scenes, but the story is turgid, so diffused, jumping around from character to character (one is not sure who is the main character), that I did not appreciate the work. This book ends with considerable excitement, but also somewhat nebulously for me. The entire work is an imposing creation, which had been expected to win Durrell the Nobel Prize--but never did. Anyway, with my reading of it I now have read 95 of the 100 "best" novels written in English in the 20th century. The five I have not read: Ulysses, Finnegan's Wake, A House for Mr. Biswas, Zuleika Dobson, and Midnight's Children. I would read the latter three but find no copy in town and have not been interested enough to ask for them thru interlibrary loan--yet. ( )