Name: My Family and Other Animals
ISBN: 9781909621985

Gerald Durrell

Apart from naturalist Gerald Durrell (the youngest) and Larry (Lawrence Durrell, the novelist), the family of Gerald comprised their widowed mother, the gun-mad Leslie, and diet-obsessed sister Margo together with Roger the dog. This title offers an autobiographical account of five years in the childhood of Gerald.

My Family and Other Animals

There are parts of this book that capture the pure joy of being a child seeing a part of nature for the first time, and others that I loved because of the way that they reminded me of my own messy and slightly dysfunctional family. 

I think this book struggles when it attempts to be an ethnography of Corfu. The weaknesses of Durrel’s point of view and his family’s casual impositions on the island get on my nerves after a while. Worse than that, on my edition there’s a particularly bad example of his racial prejudice shown in his description of a fish. These things prevented me from enjoying the book after I noticed them, and the whole thing was disappointing to me. 

Alex 

There are parts of this book that capture the pure joy of being a child seeing a part of nature for the first time, and others that I loved because of the way that they reminded me of my own messy and slightly dysfunctional family. 

I think this book struggles when it attempts to be an ethnography of Corfu. The weaknesses of Durrel’s point of view and his family’s casual impositions on the island get on my nerves after a while. Worse than that, on my edition there’s a particularly bad example of his racial prejudice shown in his description of a fish. These things prevented me from enjoying the book after I noticed them, and the whole thing was disappointing to me. 

jillian tenner

Certainly good the writing was so so good and and detailed and the choice adjectives as perfect but maybe it’s just that I’ve read a lot of mundane stuff recently but it wasn’t super captivating I am in need of more plot 