The third book of The Alexandria Quartet is different from the first two-- since Durrell wanted to discuss the subject/object distinction, it becomes an "objective" novel, written in a wide third-person point-of-view, rather than the first-person perspective of the first two. It makes for a very different novel from the first two-- while Balthazar wouldn't make sense if you hadn't read Justine (or at least it wouldn't have much of a point), Mountolive could stand entirely on its own. Its perspective is very removed from that of the first two-- its protagonist, David Mountolive, only has a couple fleeting mentions in the second book, whereas the narrator of the first two (finally given a name here) is barely in this one, and usually disparaged when he is mentioned, much to my amusement. The continuous revision of the information we received in the first book is very interesting-- Mountolive presents an entirely new set of reasons for the events of Justine yet again, so that it would seem old Balthazar didn't know what he was talking about after all. Or did he? Even though this book is written in the third person, allegedly more reliable, I never felt inclined to trust it. I think I would prefer it if the version of events given in the first book was true, but I'll wait to talk more about that once I read the last book in the series. Hopefully soon.

Mountolive is the third member of the Alexandria Quartet. The narrator of Justine and Balthazar (previously unnamed but now called Darley) appears as a minor character in this book, but this is a more conventional novel in structure, using a disembodied narrator and taking the British diplomat, David Mountolive as the main point-of-view character. It takes us for a third time through the events described in Justine, but shifts the emphasis to a much broader, politically-oriented view, so that the epic love story at the centre of Justine becomes a minor, background incident. Although set in the thirties, this is very clearly a novel written in the aftermath of the Suez fiasco, exploring the dangers inherent in the pro-Arab policy of the British government before the war.

The early chapters set on the feudal estates of the Coptic Hosnani family have an almost Russian flavour to them (possibly deliberate, as Durrell then briefly switches the scene to the British embassy in Moscow); by the end of the book we are back in a sordid Graham-Greeneland of bribery and espionage.

The odd thing about this book, perhaps, is that you could easily read it and get a great deal of pleasure out of it without knowing a thing about the two earlier books. If you are reading them in sequence, you get the additional interest of seeing the actions and motivations of the story revised and undermined yet again, with whatever that tells you about the instability of narrative authority. Possibly because Durrell isn't writing in the persona of Darley any more, there is less self-conscious overwriting, although there are still more quotable phrases per page than one is altogether comfortable with. Sadly, Scobie, the most vivid of the minor characters in the earlier books, is absent, but we still have a few scenes with Pombal, while the novelist Pursewarden really comes into his own here. ( )

3644. Mountolive a novel, by Lawrence Durrell (read 2 Nov 2002) This is the third volume of the Alexandria Quartet, and tells the same story as Balthazar but from a different perspective. It is not bad reading but has such an odd structure that I did not find it too enjoyable. ( )