My Family and Other Animals: The Corfu Trilogy 1 - Softcover

Durrell, Gerald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241981697 ISBN 13: 9780241981696

Publisher: Penguin, 2017

Synopsis

My Family and Other Animals is the bewitching account of a rare and magical childhood on the island of Corfu by treasured British conservationist Gerald Durrell.

Escaping the ills of the British climate, the Durrell family - acne-ridden Margo, gun-toting Leslie, bookworm Lawrence and budding naturalist Gerry, along with their long-suffering mother and Roger the dog - take off for the island of Corfu.

But the Durrells find that, reluctantly, they must share their various villas with a menagerie of local fauna - among them scorpions, geckos, toads, bats and butterflies.

Recounted with immense humour and charm My Family and Other Animals is a wonderful account of a rare, magical childhood.

'Durrell has an uncanny knack of discovering human as well as animal eccentricities' Sunday Telegraph

'A bewitching book' Sunday Times

About this title

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:

Durrell has an uncanny knack of discovering human as well as animal eccentricities * Sunday Telegraph *

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0241981697
• ISBN 13: 9780241981696
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320