you really don't want to know what he had in his matchbox... (My Family and Other Animals - Gerald Durrell)

Member Name: pje

Product:	My Family and Other Animals - Gerald Durrell
Date:	30/12/01 (649 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Charming and funny.

Disadvantages: English literature teachers might try to ram it down your throat and force you to write interminable essays on it. Ignore them for they are disciples of satan.

Gerald Durrell was born in Jamshedpur in India on January 7th, 1925.
His father died when he was a child. My Family and Other Animals [MF&OA] (published in 1956) is his account of the five years his family spent living on the Greek island of Corfu in the 1930's. He was fascinated by natural history as a boy, as is readily apparent from the book. He started keeping creepy-crawlies in matchboxes when he was two years old, and when he was six he told his mother that he intended to own his own zoo, and that he would give her a cottage in the grounds to live in.

He got a job as a keeper at Whipsnade Zoo in 1945, then frittered away an inheritance on animals. But the success of My Family and Other Animals meant that, three years after it was published, he achieved his lifetime's ambition and opened his own zoo (to keep and breed animals threatened with extinction) on Jersey. Gerald Durrell died in 1995 but Jersey Zoo, and the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust live on. For more information go to:

http://www.durrell.org/


The book begins with the Durrells fleeing a drizzly August in Bournemouth for the sake of their health, and ends with them returning to England for the benefit of young Gerry's education. (A dirty word in my book, as I will explain later.)

Family
¯¯¯¯¯
For the journey across Europe to Corfu, GERRY's luggage mainly consisted of natural history books, a butterfly net and a jam jar full of caterpillars! He is besotted by creepy-crawly things and during his time on the island he observes earwigs, oil-beetles, fireflies, cicadas, crab-like spiders, and shagging tortoises, to name just a few.

MRS. DURRELL is quite a laid back mother, who prefers to let her children have their own way, rather than being harrassed by them all the time.
Of course the idea of allowing a young boy to roam around exploring the countryside unsupervised, catching snakes and befriending all manner of s
trangers (including a murderer) seems rather quaint nowadays, but it does avoid frightful arguments, and families like this can't half squabble.

The oldest child, LARRY, 23, went on to become the highly respected poet and novelist Lawrence Durrell. Although how he managed to live down his portrayal in this book I've never understood. Gerry says that Larry was: "...designed by Providence to go through life like a small, blond firework, exploding ideas in other people's minds..." and "always full of ideas about things of which he had no experience." Well he had to be a writer then, didn't he! He seems to be self-centred and pompous, but he's also witty, and therefore not entirely unlikeable. Gerry's other siblings are LESLIE, 19, who likes shooting things, and MARGO, 18, who behaves like a silly girly.

The Durrell family stayed in three villas during their stay on Corfu, and the book is split into three sections accordingly:

During their stay at the STRAWBERRY-PINK villa, Gerry explores the island and meets the locals, while his family struggle to acquire a tutor for him.
Then Larry invites some friends to stay - far too many to fit into one small villa, so they have to move to a bigger one...

At the DAFFODIL-YELLOW VILLA they employ an hypochondriac maid, Larry's eccentric guests include an Armenian poet and a bald countess, Margo kisses the feet of a statue of a saint and comes down with flu, and Leslie builds a boat for Gerry (which is christened 'The Bootle Bumtrinket') and, using three shotguns and some string, improvises a burglar trap...

Finally they decide to move to a smaller villa so that there isn't enough room for Great Aunt Hermione to come and stay - an appalling prospect!
Gerry's description of their time at THE SNOW-WHITE VILLA concentrates mainly on the animals he adopts and fills it with, climaxing in a party which erupts into high f
arce with animals running amok and feathers flying.

Other Animals
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
As well as observing the wildlife of Corfu, young Gerry adopted various specimens as pets:- an owlet called Ulysses, Quasimodo the waltzing pigeon, Achilles the tortoise, Old Plop the terrapin, and a gull called Alecko. Then there's Geronimo the gecko and Cicely the mantid who have a battle to the death in his bedroom, two puppies Larry dubs Widdle and Puke, Dodo, a Dandie Dinmont terrier, who gets so attached to Mrs. Durrell that she won't let her out of her sight, and not forgetting Roger the family dog.
There are also a number of colourful local characters who Gerry becomes acquainted with, including several tutors and, most notably, Spiro, a foul-mouthed taxi-driver, who looks after the family like a "great, brown, ugly angel." I studied My Family and Other Animals for CSE and 'O' Level exams twenty years ago, and Spiro's use of the word 'sonofabitch' endeared him to a class of fifteen-year-olds I can tell you!

My Family and Other Animals is a charming, funny book, but having been made to write numerous essays about it, I became sick of the sight of it, and the silly sodding Durrells. After leaving school I didn't read a single book for about ten years. That's how they do it y'see...it's a conspiracy!

The government (whether red or blue) don't want people to read books, they need ignorant people to re-elect them. But they daren't burn the books like in Fahrenheit 451, that would be too obvious, so they attempt to brainwash kids in a much more subtle way, using reverse psychology. They concoct a syllabus full of 'safe' books and make kids read and study them to death. Then they hire English teachers as co-conspirators to do the dirty deed. Forcing books down kids' throats like cod liver oil, saying: "it's good for you!" And voilà... ...the poor kids are so sick
of books that they steer well clear of them after school. Aversion therapy in reverse. That's how they do it. They take all the joy out of reading.

Oh stop moaning, so what if I am digressing, if I want to digress
I will, this is my opinion and I'll hijack it and fly it to Cuba if I like!
Forcing kids to read and study a book is wrong, okay? So stop it!
Encourage them to read what they want to read, and to read widely.

I remember a classmate and myself getting told off for sending messages during computer science sessions when we were supposed to be writing BASIC programs. This was at the beginning of the 1980's. Does anyone program in BASIC anymore? No. Did e-mail become the most significant development in computers a DECADE later? Yes! That goes to show how much teachers know about what's going to be important in the future!

One thing that went right over my head while studying this at school,
was that Gerry Durrell had so much freedom to roam, and follow his nose, that, effectively, he educated himself, free from curricula and exams.
See? Children love to learn, to satisfy their own curiosity. But all too often education gets in the way - which is what governments want of course...

Anyway, for the benefit of those people who only really read the first and last paragraphs, My Family and Other Animals is a procession of comical anecdotes which have you chuckling, interspersed with vivid descriptions of the creepy-crawly things little Gerald found so fascinating. It's amusing, but if anyone asks you to write a few essays on it, just shoot them, ok?

I could tell you that this is a lovely book to read to your kids, but that would be irresponsible - the odd rude word can be avoided, but parents don't really need another book about a boy with a pet owl, do they?

By the way, before she died, Mrs. Durrell went to live in a manor house... ...in the grounds of Gerry's Zo
o.


¶ Paperback: £5.99 ¶ pp301 ¶ ISBN: 0140013997 ¶
______________________________________________ _____________ ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

Summary: