Gerald DurrellCritiques

Hilarious and moving. Exquisite descriptions of the island and it's flora and fauna.

I love Gerald Durrell and his writings. I did not love this book.

It seems that Durrell has lost his sense of humour, or it may be that I have lost mine. I skimmed the last couple of chapters, in a race to be finished this book. That's never happened before.

It was nice to have some of the book set in Canada. Also pleasant was getting to know Durrell's young wife, Lee. I also learned this week that I've been pronouncing DIurrell's name for years. On an appearance on Dame Edna Everage's show (RIP Barry Humphries), we discover that instead of Durr-ELL, as I've been saying it, it's DURR-ell.

Not a hit. Will probably keep the book to add to my collection of Durrell's books.

Not the book I remember enjoying as a child. This is.... not great now. It doesn't hold up well over the years, nor does it hold up well to an adult reader.

The Aye-Aye and I is the tale of Gerald Durrell's visit to Madagascar, during which time he is able to secure several critically endangered aye-ayes and return them to his captive breeding facility on the island of Jersey. In my opinion, it is the best of his animal-collecting books, and it is the last of that series that Durrell penned. The book seemed to be imbued with more passion for preserving wildlife than any of his other non-fiction works, and ended with tales of his sojourns in Mauritius, and the successes he and his team had had on that island, retrieving endangered birds, and returning them in greater numbers to the wild. It was wholly a diverting book, and I enjoyed it greatly.

Mikor éppen nem állatgyűjtő expedíciókat vezetett a világ legkülönfélébb vidékeire, vagy nem a maláriától feküdt lázas betegen, netán újabb könyvét írta, Gerald Durrell állattani előadásaival kápráztatta el a rádió hallgatóságát. Olyannyira lenyűgözve őket, hogy kikövetelték tőle a sorozat írott változatát is - ez lett a Vadak a vadonban, melyben a megszokott szórakoztató módon számol be nyugat-afrikai találkozásáról a petymegekkel, dél-amerikai kalandjáról egy kajmánnal, a világ legpompásabb nászruhájával rendelkező paradicsommadarakról, a tigrisek, a vízilovak vagy az ájtatos manók udvarlási szokásairól. Ahogy büszkén emlékezik meg arról is, hogyan segített tegzeslárvák építkezésein, s miként dédelgetett egy lidérces kinézetű ostorlábút, aki a Wilhelmina névre hallgatott. De feltárja a pöfögőfutrinkák védekezési és támadási szokásait és lerántja a leplet az útonálló darázs rovarvilágbeli műtétjeiről is, amelyek gyakorlott sebészeket is eltűnődésre késztetnek. Mindezek mellett láthatjuk esetlen próbálkozásait, amint egy kengurubébit próbál felnevelni, vagy elszánt bátorságát, amikor kígyóverembe ereszkedik alá álmából felverve az afrikai éjszaka közepén. Az argentin pampák veterán gauchójával való nanduvadászata pedig egyenesen burleszkbe illő epizód.

Funny and at times sad tales of animals in the zoo that became the New Jersey Wildlife Trust.

I read My Family and Other Animals as part of the January CalendarCAT. It has been on the Kindle for a long time as part of a compendium of all three books. But, I'm counting them one at a time.

I had seen the PBS series about the Durrells and Corfu and enjoyed it. Durrell's memoir is fun: full of the curiosity and free spirit of the young boy he was and, it seemed, probably still was in his old age. I don't quite understand the propensity to capture and cage wild animals but I suppose that is how naturalists learn. Another interesting tidbit came via Wikipedia: Durrell's brother was well-known novelist Lawrence Durrell who was married and brought his wife with him to Corfu. Gerald fails to mention Nancy. Meanwhile, in his own fictional version, Durrell only mentions brother Leslie, ignoring Gerald and his mother and sister. I could only think, "Recollections may vary."

It was fun and I will eventually read the other two.

A great childhood. A good read.

Descriptive power, adventurousness, enthusiasm, and humour are Durrell’s great strengths, and they give this book the charm and interest that has made it so well loved for decades. The many descriptions of the creatures and plants of Corfu here include ascribing emotions or qualities to them. As such, they are often fanciful but at the same time knowledgeable, and so they “animate” the account. Once set, this sense and tone of animation feels appropriate, and so when the young Durrell’s tutor leads us to his imaginative mother and the “talking flowers” she describes (chapter 24), this fits pleasingly in. As in Don Quixote, or Schweijk, a bunch of stories or anecdotes from third parties are thrown in and doubtless embellished. Some land well, others less so. The author presumably can’t resist, whether from doubt that he may ever find another outlet for these exploits or from sheer raconteurial gusto. Among many memorable scenes, the portrait of the picnic, siesta, cooking fire, and moonlit return from the excursion to the Lake of Liliies would make anyone yearn for such an idyllic and wholesome setting.

The Whispering Land is the tale of Gerald Durrell's animal collecting trip to Argentina in the 1950s. It is much less a story of collecting animals and more of a travelogue. Argentina is one of the places in the world that I dream of visiting, and this book whetted my appetite even more.½

A Zoo in my Luggage is the story of naturalist Gerald Durrell's second animal-collecting venture to what were then called the British Cameroons. It is now an independent nation called Cameroon. The story is an excellent one, full of adventure and humour, and detailed and highly engaging tales of capturing animals and socializing with the natives.

The most memorable part of the book is not the animals, but the local headman, the Fon of Bafut. Readers of Durrell will remember the Fon from an earlier book The Bafut Beagles. The ruler of this area of north-west Cameroon is a wonderful figure. Did you know that much of our common knowledge about the Fon has been gleaned from Durrell's portraits of him? This Fon was named Achirimbi II. He was tall; erect of bearing, clad usually in yellow robes and a skull-cap, generally holding tight to a endless glass of scotch, and he is an aficianado of dancing, women, and booze. He had dozens of wives. He is a fascinating character, whose appearances in the book brighten the story immeasurably. There are Fons of Bafut to this day, although they wield less power, and act mainly as local magistrates and administrators under the central government of Cameroon.

Durrell's fame is at least partially because he excels at anthropomophizing the animals he collects. He gives them names, he describes the animals in hilarious anecdotes, and attributes to them quite human characteristics. In this book there are no lack of funny animals to delight the reader.

The book would have received five stars had it not been for the timely, but intolerable way of speaking of native Cameroonians? Camerooners? Google tells me that Cameroonian is the correct demonym. There is also something left to be desired in the unethical way in which Durrell simply marched in and captured wildlife. I do realize that this was the common way of speaking and acting in 1957, but it is off-putting.

The narrator, Rupert Degas, is excellent, and he does voices incredibly well.

The humor here is incredibly dated and repetitive.½

The 3rd book in The Zoo Memoirs Trilogy, published in 1964, Durrell lets you in on what it was like, day-in and day-out, to work a private zoo, Managerie Manor, on Channel Isle in Jersey, and care for 500 to 600 animals. I'm surprised he found time to write so many books while running a zoo. Being a private zoo, the islanders provided great support with food, which was the greatest challenge. Grocers gave them faulty, but still good, fruits and vegetables. Farmers gave them their young bulls they culled, and others helped gather acorns and such from around. There were so many things to consider when working a zoo, like settling-in new animals so they weren't so fearful of the hand that fed them, watching for sudden illnesses and diseases, whether contracted from inside the zoo or if it arrived with the disease, of which antibiotics and vitamin B12 were most useful, administering first aid for broken bones, breeding (zoo marriages), and rounding up escaped animals. He gives examples of each of these in cute little stories, especially the introduction and marriage of the two gorillas, N'Pongo and Nandy.

His main goal, as a conservationist wanting to keep rare animals from becoming extinct, was to turn his private zoo into a scientific Trust, which he finally was successful after 22 years. He was able to get together a council of people on the Island to help raise the money for the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust and to support the zoo, now called Durrell Wildlife Park.

This is the first in The Zoo Memoirs Trilogy by Gerald Durrell, originally published in 1960. The follow-up to A Zoo in My Luggage is “The Whispering Land”. I’m not sure if the publisher, Open Road Media, has thrown in another book as a selling point for it to be a Trilogy, but the third book is called “Menagerie Manor”.

Gerald Durrell (1925 - 1995) was born in India and grew up loving to study wildlife. His writing is very easy and his stories of the animals they collected over the years are quite humorous. I was just a little put off and couldn’t quite understand his use of native African dialogue at times.

You will find a photo of him, at age 10, all dressed up in his exploration garb at the back of the book, along with 13 other photos of himself throughout his life’s work.

He was a British naturalist, and I would say a writer and a little bit of an artist as well, whose main goal was to educate the people so they would have a better understanding and care for wild and nearly extinct animals. He had gathered animals in Bafut, Camaroon, Africa, before for other zoo owners, but now he wanted his own zoo. So, he headed back to Bafut with his wife, along with his secretary, Sophie, and another naturalist, Bob, and they stayed at the Fon of Bafut’s place, while he paid the local native hunters to gather wild and rare animals, birds, insects, and rodents. He accepted only about 10% of what they found, the rest were let lose back into the wild. He also paid the local native children daily to go out and hunt for snails, birds’ eggs, beetle larvae, grasshoppers, spiders, rats, etc…to feed his growing menagerie, which was around 250 by the time they left Africa and headed home with “a zoo in their luggage”.

The trials and hardships of them dealing with all of these animals makes for a great story. All of the thought that had to go into the daily feedings and cleanings, and the preparation for them to travel back to Bournemouth, England, with all those animals was quite remarkable. He had no place to put the animals so temporarily set them up in his sister’s backyard. He would later, in a stroke of luck, find the perfect place in Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands. Today, there is a bronze statue of Durrell that stands at the entrance to the Jersey Zoo, now called Durrell Wildlife Park.

In Book 2 of The Zoo Memoir Trilogy, originally published in 1961, it appears that Gerald Durrell wanted to follow the path of Charles Darwin as recorded in "The Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle". Before getting to their first main destination, Patagonia, along the coastline of Southern Argentina in South America, he made a point to stop and stay over at a small town called Carmen de Patagones, one where Darwin had stayed and written about while on his adventure. Once reaching Patagonia, he, his wife Jacquie, and his secretary Sophie, stayed in Calilegua with a couple he had met. They actually let him store his collection in their garage, and even helped take care of the animals at times while he went on his own excursions in search of rare creatures.

Once again, his observations of the penguins and fur seals in the wild are very interesting and quite humorous. It is as if you were actually watching National Geographic with a commentary. But, unfortunately, this was the most interesting thing about his journey to Argentina.

In Part 2, he continues his travel down to Jujuy looking to collect more animals and birds for his zoo back on the Channel Isle in Jersey. His wife, Jacquie, had to be sent back home and didn't make this part of the adventure because upon first arriving in Patagonia, they were involved in an automobile accident which left her with severe migraines.

The focus in this book seemed to be more on the people he met and his travelling adventures getting from one place to another. Still quite an adventure, but just not quite as interesting. His strong suit in writing seems to be in his descriptions of animal behavior.

He was able to collect about 150 rare birds and animals to ship back to his zoo. You might want to have your phone nearby so you can Google images of the wild animals he crosses paths with and mentions, such as the variety of parrots, guans, seriemas, coatimundis, puma, agouti, his favorite...a very young peccary he named Juanita (common species of wild pig), tree frogs and a baby coral snake, pigmy owl, a pair of douroucoulis from the monkey tribe, etc...

Now on to Book 3: Menagerie Manor...

2023 - 26

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. I love nature and I love humorous writing, but the combination of the two just didn't work for me in this case. Much of the humour derives from people doing dumb or inconsiderate things, and then suffering the consequences very shortly afterwards. I just couldn't help but sympathise with the person who was wronged rather than seeing the funny side of a meal spoiled by the presence of scorpions or a poorly constructed boat.

The characters were not engaging, seen as they are through the naturally self-centred eyes of a child. And the colonialist elements really grated right throughout the book. I know that Corfu wasn't a part of the British Empire at the time, but just the general attitude of moving the whole family there, renting a villa and then admiring the picturesque "peasants" in the fields was too much for me. There's also a colonial aspect the ceaseless conquest of nature that the narrator carries out. Just when I found myself warming to him as he observed the natural world with the wonder of a child, he'd change tack and grab a wild animal and stick it in a cage or a tank. This rarely ended well for the animals, although the reader only finds out about their "amusing" endings, not the many which must have perished in more mundane ways.

Yes, I know that desire to capture and own animals is very normal in children. I also know that this book is not meant to be read earnestly, but somehow I just couldn't warm to it.

My only complaint for this book is that the author reproduces the speech impediments and incorrect English of some of the characters. This is very distracting, and has been considered poor form for several decades. When the book was published it was probably a common style, so the author isn't trying to make fun of the characters, but all the same it is irritating.

High 3.

Not normally the sort of thing I would generally pick up, but I was pleasantly surprised.
An easy read with some fun anecdotes and good laughs. I may yet read another in the series.

Segunda parte de la célebre trilogía de Corfú -iniciada con «Mi familia y otros animales y concluida con «El jardín de los dioses»-, Bichos y demás parientes prosigue la crónica de la estancia de Gerald Durrell y su familia en la isla mediterránea, así como la narración autobiográfica, sembrada de divertidas anécdotas, de una infancia envidiable, con el campo y el mar como única escuela, y sin más clave de explicación de la alarmante racionalidad de los seres humanos que la que proporciona la contemplación atenta y curiosa de esos «parientes» supuestamente irracionales que son los miembros de la familia animal

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Gerry tells us that he regards himself as a lucky person. Since the age of two he made up his mind that he was going to study animals. Nothing else interested him.

He wanted to become a collector of animals and eventually have his own zoo. All this came to pass.

He tells us a lot about his life but never mentions his childhood in Greece, which is what we best know about him from the tv series.

The book’s main content is an account of Gerry’s first job, at Whipsnade Zoo.

Gerry’s talents are not only describing the various animals he cares for but also the people he encounters. He is at his most humorous when describing people.

Regarding the head of Whipsnade Zoo, Captain Beale, he imparts to us that he spoke “in a sort of muted roar”.

At the zoo, he is given various basic tasks, such as feeding the animals, clearing out the stalls, cages, and so forth.

Beale and the others working at the zoo tend to rather look down on Gerry: they have no idea that he is to become a world famous animal expert and best-selling author.

Though he is not given prestigious tasks at the zoo, he studies all the animals he’s assigned to take care of with his unsurpassable and meticulous powers of observation.

He is fortunate to get cheap lodging with a kind woman, Mrs Bailey, the wife of one of the zoo’s employees, who supplies him with delicious and sumptuous meals.

It was somewhat shocking for Gerry that his first job was taking care of the lions. He would rather have begun by looking after “a herd of dewy-eyed deer”.

The lion was called Albert and his two wives were Nan and Jill.

They didn’t look fierce and wild to him, in fact they looked overweight, lazy and slightly superior.

One of the keepers, Jesse, warns him that he shouldn’t try any tricks with the lions, or they’ll “have him”. They may look tame but they’re not.

He had to learn the routine work of feeding and cleaning and other daily chores, but when this was mastered he was able to watch the animals and try to learn something about them.

The keepers, Jesse and Joe, were vastly amused by the fact that Gerry carried an enormous notebook in his pocket and would at the slightest provocation whip it out and make an entry.

Gerry read up about lions but fund that what he read did not fit with reality.

In Pliny’s Natural History (1674) lions were said to be gentle but Gerry discovered that Albert did not possess an ounce of mercy.

Albert spent his time hiding behind bushes and leaping out at unsuspecting old ladies as they passed (though he couldn’t actually get at them, of course).

Albert and his wives had prodigious appetites and in spite of being so fat would squabble and snarl over their meat as though they had not been fed for weeks.

Gerry describes his interaction with the lions in a wonderful, satirical style.

After knowing Albert for some weeks, Gerry decided that he was “sulky, blustery and devoid of any finer feelings whatsoever”

His small golden eyes always had in them “an expression of baffled rage”.

He always had a “faintly puzzled look” about him.

Either he pranced about in a “filthy temper” or indulged in his joke of jumping out at unsuspecting passers-by and getting “a sardonic pleasure out of their panic”.

Gerry tried very hard but could not find “a single endearing quality” in Albert.

His next job was looking after the tigers. There were four tigers.

Ranee.and Paul were mother and son and lived in a pit. Gerry was permitted to scratch Paul’s ears. Jum and Maurena lived in a “great” cage.

Jum and his mate communicated by means of sniffs - “prodigious nose-quivering sniffs”.

Each sniff seemed to have its own meaning, and each sounded different from the other.

At one point Gerry met the owner’s son, Billy, though he didn’t know that was who he was.

He was a tall red-headed boy who waved his arms about like windmills and giggled. Gerry took Billy to be a sort of idiot since he, Billy, didn’t understand a word Gerry said.

Maurena, the tigress, had come into season and now Gerry observed and made copious notes about the tigers’ courtship.

Maurena had changed overnight from a “timid, servile creature” to a “slinking, dangerous animal” that dealt with Jum’s advances “speedily and ferociously”.

Gerry gives us a description of the whole procedure.

Another curious thing Gerry observed was that Jum used to lick his meat before devouring it. The meat was shredded off by the abrasive qualities of his tongue.

When Gerry was at Whipsnade, he was inundated with a multitude of what he considered to be inane questions about the animals. The public seemed to be totally ignorant of even the commonest facts of animal life.

And one little boy asked him “Mister, ‘ave you ever been ate by one of them buggers?”

Another little boy called to his mother, “Mum, come here quick and look at this zebra (one of the tigers).”

Gerry is invited to drinks by Billy’s father, Captain Beale. Later he’s regularly invited to dinner with the family.

This is a vastly entertaining, humorous and informative book, and you will enjoy it greatly if you have the slightest interest in animals and appreciate Gerrys’ wonderful humour. Highly recommended.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/my-family-and-other-animals-by-gerald-durrell/

As a teenager, I read several of Gerald Durrell’s autobiographical notes on collecting animals in Africa with great interest and enthusiasm. Nowadays I’m not so sure about the ethics of bringing animals out of their home environments, to which they are well adapted, to be gawked at by Europeans in cages. I’m sure that there are good arguments to be made on both sides.

Anyway, this is the story of Durrell’s childhood on the island of Corfu, as the youngest of a large family who settled there in the 1930s. He was already a keen collector of animals, and clearly drove his eccentric relatives mad with the inevitable domestic accidents that took place. But it’s a very affectionate portrait of an untroubled childhood, even if it leans a little too much on the funny foreigners that happen to live in foreign parts.

This is my favourite book of all time. It made me laugh out loud. And the nature descriptions are fantastic too

En este, como en los otros dos volúmenes, la atenta observación de la fauna del territorio, la colorista descripción de los paisajes, la animada semblanza de figuras singulares y el humorístico relato de anécdotas tienen como telón de fondo el emocionado recuerdo de una adolescencia libre y plena.