Call number
BIO DURRELL
Collection
Genres
Publication
Faber & Faber (1998), Edition: First Edition, 768 pages
Description
Undertaken at Lawrence Durrell's invitation, this biography is based on access to the writer's personal papers, notebooks and letters. It draws heavily on his own memories and those of friends and contemporaries, as well as his family and the many women in his life, including his wives.
User reviews
LibraryThing member IonaS
I got hold of this book as an unrenewable library book, and thus was able to get through only a little of it, in view of its size.
If the book has a fault, it is its excessive detail and prodigious size. It begins by elucidating Durrell´s ancestry on both sides of the family and telling us of his
We learn about the whole family, which we also know from little brother Gerry´s entertaining books about their life on Corfu. The most interesting parts of the present book were, perhaps obviously, about Larry´s many relationships, including with the famous Henry Miller.
Though I admit I haven´t read the whole book, I have looked through it; I didn´t find much, if anything, about Larry´s daughter Sappho´s claims of having an incestuous relationship with her father: I had read elsewhere that Larry was obsessed with incest, and such a relationship would certainly have explained Sappho´s mental/emotional problems and her eventual suicide.
Perhaps it was a drawback that the author was a personal friend of Durrell´s, since then it might have been difficult for him to go into the negative aspects of his character and behaviour, including his drunkenness and violence when drunk,
I would quite have liked to have read this well-written book in its entirety, but decided that despite its qualities life was too short to spend reading it.
If the book has a fault, it is its excessive detail and prodigious size. It begins by elucidating Durrell´s ancestry on both sides of the family and telling us of his
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upbringing in India.We learn about the whole family, which we also know from little brother Gerry´s entertaining books about their life on Corfu. The most interesting parts of the present book were, perhaps obviously, about Larry´s many relationships, including with the famous Henry Miller.
Though I admit I haven´t read the whole book, I have looked through it; I didn´t find much, if anything, about Larry´s daughter Sappho´s claims of having an incestuous relationship with her father: I had read elsewhere that Larry was obsessed with incest, and such a relationship would certainly have explained Sappho´s mental/emotional problems and her eventual suicide.
Perhaps it was a drawback that the author was a personal friend of Durrell´s, since then it might have been difficult for him to go into the negative aspects of his character and behaviour, including his drunkenness and violence when drunk,
I would quite have liked to have read this well-written book in its entirety, but decided that despite its qualities life was too short to spend reading it.
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LibraryThing member ivanfranko
Reading in 2017, Durrell's life, his philosophic approach to writing, his banal sexism, all appear dated and jejune. His Hellenic enthusiasms don't stand for much when we discover his dirty work for the Foreign Office in Cyprus.
The biography is a sympathetic one, yet the subject and the subject
The biography is a sympathetic one, yet the subject and the subject
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matter fail to convince me that Durrell was particularly talented, nor that his philosophic approach was disciplined and rigorous. Show Less
Awards
Runciman Award (Winner — 1999)
Pages
768
ISBN
0571172482 / 9780571172481