My Family and Other Animals

Durrell, Gerald

ISBN 10: 1906147698 ISBN 13: 9781906147693

Publisher: Canongate CSA Audio, 2010

Synopsis

My Family and Other Animals is the story of the adventurous time Durrell and his family spent on the island of Corfu during his childhood. Worn down by the miserable English weather, Gerry's family takes the unusual step - for a 1930s British family - of moving somewhere hotter. Treated to the sunshine of Greece with its array of flora and fauna, young Gerald is in a budding naturalist's utopia, with the added bonus of being able to observe the unusual creatures known as his relatives. His placid mother, gun-obsessed brother Leslie, angst and acne-plagued sister Margo, and eldest brother the irascible author Larry put on a dazzling display of human quirk, and combine with strays such as Spiro the local taxi-driver to brilliant comic effect. Animal and human life combine in this beautiful, timelessly entertaining memoir.

Hugh Bonneville is an acclaimed British stage, television, film and radio actor.

About this title

Review:

As a self-described "champion of small uglies," English writer Gerald Durrell (1925-1995) devoted his life to writing and the preservation of wildlife, from the Mauritius pink pigeon to the Rodriques fruit bat. My Family and Other Animals was intended to embrace the natural history of the Greek island of Corfu, but ended up as a delightful account of his family's experiences that were, according to him, "rather like living in one of the more flamboyant and slapstick comic operas."

As a 10-year-old boy, Gerry left England for Corfu with "all those items that I thought necessary to relieve the tedium of a long journey: four books on natural history, a butterfly net, a dog, and a jam-jar full of caterpillars all in imminent danger of turning into chrysalids." Durrell's descriptions of his family and its many eccentric hangers-on (he stresses that "all the anecdotes about the island and the islanders are absolutely true") are highly entertaining, as is the procession of toads, scorpions, geckos, ladybugs, glowworms, octopuses, the puppies Widdle and Puke, and the Magenpies. This is a lovely book.

Book Description:

Childhood memoir of conservationist and animal-lover Gerald Durrell.

About this edition

• Publisher: Canongate CSA Audio
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1906147698
• ISBN 13: 9781906147693
• Binding: Audio CD
• Number of pages: 1