How do you review, how do you qualify, how do you classify an experience like "Justine"? It's my introduction to Durrell as a writer, and a turning point in my adventures in literature.

Durrell feverishly and uncompromisingly explores the inner-workings of his half-dozen lead characters, filtered through the locational limitations of their chosen city - Alexandria - and describes how each person is constantly fettered by their own past, but also their social and societal contexts, their fears and self-doubts, and their attempts at interaction. It would be easy simply to quote endless snippets of Durrell's writing here, to explain his genius. But this seems useless. Read the book yourself instead.

It's an exhausting experience, this much is true. Emotionally, linguistically, even - in some unusual way - physically. At the same time, this snappy (200 page) book never feels dense. Despite his closely-textured style, the reader can race through this experience, never feeling daunted by the words at hand.

Are there parts of Durrell and his style that I question? Certainly. Women, homosexuals, children, people of different colours and religions... they're all given equal weight as characters, certainly, but sometimes they're more easily defined by their different element. (Durrell's feelings on sex and love are complex, but at times it seems like he sees gay men as simply horny men who have forsaken love for the easier - but undoubtedly loveless - sexual interaction that comes with men. And his characters constantly referring to children as "it" annoys me, even though I accept it was a commonplace of the era.) One could also ask questions about his interactions with the lower classes. Durrell's Alexandria pulses with life, this is true, and his descriptive passages are viscerally evocative. However, his characters rarely engage with work or real life; they seem instead to drift through at their own pace. Perhaps this is being too specific - after all, why should the novel focus on the narrator's teaching career when it is exploring his relationship with Justine? Or perhaps it is being churlish - by the inverse token, "Les Miserables" doesn't feature many sympathetic or realistically-drawn rich people: that would be against its mandate! So, I'll let it slide.

Durrell can be a challenging read for someone of my generation. First, much of his speech and use of words is archaic (when was the last time anyone used "terrible" to mean anything other than "of poor quality"?). Second, he had me running for the dictionary sometimes as much as four times in one sentence! (Not that I'd ever complain about learning new words or being challenged, it just unnerves me as someone who has always prided myself on my vocabulary). Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, he comes from a very different generation and - more importantly - was writing for people like himself: upper-middle-class folk who has plenty of leisure time, who had undoubtedly travelled Europe and/or Northern Africa, who had at least a workable knowledge of three or four Romance languages, and who had a thorough knowledge of mythological, literary, and cultural references. It struck me the other day, while reading "Justine" on the train, that our society has segregated far more of late. The middle class no longer have this knowledge; it is reserved only for the few who develop a passion for it, and the few who are born to it. I almost fit that bill, so I was less challenged than many readers may be, but it's certainly clear that Durrell's target audience no longer exists, and that these books - written a scant 55 years ago - will need to be quite exhaustively annotated for future generations, if they are to remain in the public eye at all.

"Justine" still has much to offer. Its depictions of Alexandria, oozing sweat and life and dust. The broken reminiscences of the narrator, attempting to reconcile his notions of love and sex with his experiences of same. The fascinating complexities of Nessim and Melissa, of Scobie and Clea, even of the seemingly one-note Capodistria. And, of course, the eponymous portrait. I'm assuming that that fractured portraiture is Durrell's ultimate endgame, as I will discover when I read the remainder of the Alexandria Quartet. Justine is seen refracted through so many pairs of eyes in this novel, and each heart, each mind teases out different pieces of information. None of them are wrong, per se, but none of them are absolutely right. Durrell is asking us to consider which parts of a person's dimensions are truly the essence of themselves. After all, we all wear so many masks in life that these elements threaten to overtake, and, of course, we are many different - yet truthful - things to many different people. Beyond this, we evolve and change with each experience in life. And finally, there is the fact that sometimes our minds do hold breathtaking contradictions, some that we cannot quite understand ourselves.

For such a messy question, Durrell has found quite an elegant attempt at an answer. ( )

The first volume in The Alexandria Quartet largely concerns the relationship between the narrator and Justine, the wife of Nessim, a wealthy Alexandrian. But, as is commonly observed, as much as the book may be about love and sex and relationships, it’s really about Alexandria. And it is nearly impossible to imagine a more perceptive, nuanced account of the city itself in the 1930s. Durrell’s English is extraordinary—poetic, flowing, rich, wise, pithy, and epigrammatic. You could ignore the narrative and just read this for Durrell’s mastery of the language. But you’d miss a masterpiece. ( )

Superv. ( )

This book took me forever to read - I could only read several pages of the first part before becoming exhausted. The language used was at times beautiful, but a lot of time it bordered on insanity. Truly! How many times can a person wonder about the affairs they're in to the detriment of moving the story along? None of the characters is extraordinarily likeable and they seem to thrive on discontentment.
And the words used in this book.... I had to Google so many of them because not only are they possibly reflective of the times, but the words just aren't used in normal conversation.
I doubt that I will reading the other books in this quartet. It rated three stars only for the final two parts which partially redeemed the book. ( )

“I tried to tell myself how stupid this all was – a banal story of an adultery which was among the cheapest commonplaces of the city: and how it did not deserve romantic or literary trappings. And yet somewhere else, at a deeper level, I seemed to recognize that the experience upon which I had embarked would have the deathless finality of a lesson learned.�

Set in Egypt in the 1930s, this book is about an unnamed man having an affair with the titular Justine, though he professes to love his long-term girlfriend, Melissa. Justine is married to Nessim, and she says he loves her husband, but she carries on with multiple lovers as if she cannot control this part of her nature. Jealousy is a main theme.

It is broken into four segments. The first two were difficult to get through, basically describing the decadent life of expats in Alexandria. This type of subject matter rarely appeals to me, and I almost gave up on it. The third becomes more focused, as Nessim finds out about Justine’s affair. The fourth segment is outstanding and the best part of the book.

It is ornately written, which was distracting at first, but I came to appreciate it by the end. Speaking of the end, the characters finally realize that their actions have repercussions, so it has more substance. It took me forever to read this relatively short book (250 pages). I can appreciate its literary merit, but I am also glad to be finished.
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