Ian S. MacNiven

I got hold of this book as an unrenewable library book, and thus was able to get through only a little of it, in view of its size.

If the book has a fault, it is its excessive detail and prodigious size. It begins by elucidating Durrell´s ancestry on both sides of the family and telling us of his upbringing in India.

We learn about the whole family, which we also know from little brother Gerry´s entertaining books about their life on Corfu. The most interesting parts of the present book were, perhaps obviously, about Larry´s many relationships, including with the famous Henry Miller.

Though I admit I haven´t read the whole book, I have looked through it; I didn´t find much, if anything, about Larry´s daughter Sappho´s claims of having an incestuous relationship with her father: I had read elsewhere that Larry was obsessed with incest, and such a relationship would certainly have explained Sappho´s mental/emotional problems and her eventual suicide.

Perhaps it was a drawback that the author was a personal friend of Durrell´s, since then it might have been difficult for him to go into the negative aspects of his character and behaviour, including his drunkenness and violence when drunk,

I would quite have liked to have read this well-written book in its entirety, but decided that despite its qualities life was too short to spend reading it.… (mere)