My Family and Other Animals (Cascades) - Hardcover

Durrell, Gerald

4.17

55,712 ratings by Goodreads

9780003303186: My Family and Other Animals (Cascades)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0003303187 ISBN 13: 9780003303186

Publisher: Collins Educational, 1997

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A humourous and motivating autobiography. A family moves to Corfu, and their hilarious meetings with the local people, birds and beasts are sure to delight the student.

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Review:

As a self-described "champion of small uglies," 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. --Christine Buttery

Review:

"A lot of frolic, fun, and charming ribaldry, as well as the warm feeling of having been transported to a lovely spot where worry is unknown and anything is believable."-The New York Times
"A most enjoyable idyll." -The New Yorker

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