My Family and Other Animals - Hardcover

Durrell, Gerald

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0755111974 ISBN 13: 9780755111978

Publisher: House of Stratus Ltd, 2003

Synopsis

When the Durrell family can no longer endure the damp, gray English climate, they do what any sensible family would do: sell their house and relocate to the sun-soaked Greek island of Corfu. Through glorious silver-and-green olive groves and across brilliant tusk-white beaches, ten-year-old Gerry, the youngest of the four Durrell children, pursues his interest in natural history with a joyful passion, revealing the engrossing hidden world of the island's fauna. Many hilarious mishaps ensue as each of Gerry's new animal friends is installed in the family villa. Water snakes recuperate from heat stroke in the bathtub, matchboxes are filled with scorpions, and a pair of rowdy magpies make short order of everything from elaborate dinner spreads to Lawrence's prized manuscript to the patience of the family puppies, Widdle and Puke. Toads and tortoises, bats and butterflies, scorpions and geckos, ladybugs, praying mantises, octopuses, pigeons, and gulls are only some of the animals lovingly described in Durrell's classic tale of his childhood island home.

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.

About the Author

Gerald Durrell was born in 1925 in India. His family eventually settled on the island of Corfu, where his interest in wildlife, a cause to which he would dedicate his life, first grew. He travelled extensively on zoological expeditions, and made over seventy television programmes on wildlife subjects. In 1982 he was awarded the OBE. Encouraged to write by his brother Lawrence, his first book, The Overloaded Ark (1953) became a bestseller, and he went on to write 36 other titles. He died in 1995.

Edition details

• Publisher: House of Stratus Ltd
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0755111974
• ISBN 13: 9780755111978
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400