My Family and Other Animals

Rating:
Summary: Quite simply the funniest book I have read.
Review: As a young boy I was forced, with some considerable reluctance, to read 'My Family and Other Animals' by one of teachers at my school in England, 'in order to improve my vocabulary'. All is forgiven, Mr Cox, for within my rather battered copy lurked, without doubt, the most hilarious account of familial eccentricity, and light-hearted feuding that I have ever come across.

The book, as Mr Durrell explains in introduction, was intended to describe the glorious flora and fauna of Corfu, a greek island where he spent some time as a child. In this goal, he has succeeded admirably, as the whole atmosphere of the island is exquisitely recreated, to an extent that even on a rainy afternoon in Sidcup, it is not difficult to be transported to a sunny morning in the Aegean watching a young Gerry discovering a nest of a trapdoor spider, or perhaps discovering something of the mating rituals of the greek tortoise.

It is in the descriptions of the family, however, where this book really comes to life. As Mr Durrell describes in the introduction, the family, as in life, once they had begun to appear, muscled their way into the rest of pages as well. From tales of the rotund, pretentious Larry (Lawrence Durrell, of the Alexandria Quartet fame), the gun-mad Leslie and the 'muslin and gauze' swathed sister, Margot, to the desciptions the long-suffering mother, the family had me laughing out loud at the most inopportune moments.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I read it regularly, and am still crying with laughter all the way through. Not only a splendid book for the evocative descriptions of the natural history, this is the most witty book I have ever read.