My Family and Other Animals

''My Family and Other Animals'' (1956) is an autobiographical book by British naturalist Gerald Durrell. It tells in an exaggerated and sometimes fictionalised way of the years that he lived as a child with his siblings and widowed mother on the Greek island of Corfu between 1935 and 1939. It describes the life of the Durrell family in a humorous manner, and explores the fauna of the island. It is the first and most well-known of Durrell's Corfu trilogy, which also includes ''Birds, Beasts, and Relatives'' (1969) and ''The Garden of the Gods'' (1978).

Durrell had already written several successful books about his trips collecting animals in the wild for zoos when he published ''My Family and Other Animals'' in 1956. Its comic exaggeration of the foibles of his family – including his eldest brother Lawrence Durrell, who became a celebrated novelist and poet – and his heartfelt appreciation of the natural world made it very successful. Durrell was able to found the Jersey Zoological Park (now known as the Durrell Wildlife Park) in the Channel Islands. He also became known as a novel-writer and television personality. His books helped stimulate the development of tourism in Corfu.

Summary

The book is an autobiographical account of five years in the childhood of naturalist Gerald Durrell, aged 10 at the start of the saga, of his family, pets and life during a sojourn on Corfu. The book is divided into three sections, marking the three villas where the family lived on the island. Gerald is the youngest in a family consisting of their widowed mother, writer and eldest son Larry, the gun-mad Leslie, and Dieting, diet-obsessed sister Margo together with Roger the dog. They are fiercely protected by their taxi-driver friend Spiro (Spiro "Americano" Hakiaopulos) and mentored by the polymath Dr. Theodore Stephanides who provides Gerald with his education in natural history. Other human characters, chiefly eccentric, include Gerald's private tutors, the artistic and literary visitors Larry invites to stay, and the local people who befriend the family.

Background

The book was written in 1955 in Bournemouth, where Durrell was recuperating from a severe attack of jaundice. Whereas Durrell often claimed to find writing a chore, this book was different: his first wife Jacquie recalled: "Never have I known Gerry work as he did then; it seemed to pour out of him". Durrell maintained that "he had started off like a good cook with three ingredients which, delicious alone, were even better in combination: namely, the spellbinding landscape of a Greek island before tourism succeeded in spoiling it for tourists; his discovery of and friendship with the wild denizens, both animal and Greek, of that island; and the eccentric conduct of all members of his family." The book was an instant success.

Although ''My Family and Other Animals'' is presented as autobiographical, the events described are not always true. In particular, Larry lived in another part of Corfu with his first wife Nancy Durrell, whom Gerald does not mention at all. The chronology of events as they occur in the book is also inaccurate, and the reason for the Durrells' departure from Corfu (imminent outbreak of World War II) is not given; instead, it is implied that the family returned to England for the sake of Gerald's education.

However, the book does succeed in preserving the impressions of ten- to fourteen-year-old Gerald extremely vividly and with a great deal of light-hearted humour. Despite the omissions and inaccuracies, Lawrence Durrell commented: "This is a very wicked, very funny, and I'm afraid rather truthful book – the best argument I know for keeping thirteen-year-olds at boarding-schools and not letting them hang about the house listening in to conversations of their elders and betters".

The book was first published by Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd in 1956, and in paperback by Penguin Books
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