Rereading a favourite childhood book: My Family and Other Animals

It must have been in my early teenage years that I first read Gerald Durrell's book My Family and Other Animals. I loved it, and I'm pretty sure I read it more than once. I decided recently to re-read it. I don't have a good history with revisiting things from my childhood. I had a bad experience rewatching Blake's 7. Even one of my favourite TV Series, Heroes, wasn't that interesting when I rewatched the first episode.

To put the summary at the start - it was a good move. In case you're not familiar with it, My Family etc. tells the story of how Gerry, his widowed mother, and older sister and two brothers moved to Corfu when he was ten years old. Gerry was fascinated by the wildlife around him and the book, and the following two books in what is sometimes sold as the Corfu Trilogy, is a mixture of descriptions of his nature explorations and the things his family gets up to. To give you an idea of the latter, here's a sample:

“Les, muttering wrathfully, hauled the bedclothes off the recumbent Larry and used them to smother the flames. Larry sat up indignantly.

'What the the hell is going on?' he demanded.

'The room is on fire, dear.'

'Well, I don't see why I should freeze to death... why tear all the bedclothes off? Really, the fuss you all make. It's quite simple to put out a fire.'

'Oh, shut up!' snapped Leslie, jumping up and down on the bedclothes.”

When I read the book I was around Gerry's age. I saw his descriptions of his siblings - Margo, 18, Leslie, 19 and Larry who was 23 - through my own eyes. They were grown-ups, doing grown up things, like Margo with her admirers. Rereading when I was roughly the age of Mrs Durrell, it was like looking at young adults about the age of my own children. The first time round I was entranced by his descriptions of the animals around him, like scorpions, mantids and butterflies. If you ever catch me sitting on the patio watching ants scurrying around I think I could attribute that behaviour to this book. The second time round I appreciated more of what was going on with the adults.

I must have read it more than once, because some phrases really stick in my mind. (Of course this will make no sense unless you've read it.)

Remarkably unintelligent you have been, no? Kissing the Saint's feet! Po-po-po-po-po!

My mental picture reel also has vivid images too, such as the rose beetle man, who has...

"a number of lengths of cotton, to each of which was tied an almond-size rose-beetle, glistening golden green in the sun, all of them flying round his hat."

There was a TV series made about the Durrells, which mostly featured the antics of the family, rather than spending a lot of time with Gerry's explorations of the island and it's animals. If you then go and read the book you'll find a lot more about the animals, which may be a good or bad thing, depending on your taste. As is probably always the case, my mental picture of his brothers and sister was probably influenced by Little House on the Prarie. 

Gerry grew up and had a career as a naturalist. He wrote books about the expeditions he went on, but they don't feature his family.

Larry had a career as a writer. Margo also wrote a book, called "Whatever happened to Margo?". I started reading it, but it wasn't that interesting. (The answer, in case you're wondering is, "she ran a boarding house".)

I'll leave you with a quote which captures his skill in writing, and I hope it encourages you to read his books.

The phosphorescence was particularly good that night. By plunging your hand into the water and dragging it along you could draw a wide golden-green ribbon of cold fire across the sea, and when you dived as you hit the surface it seemed as though you had plunged into a frosty furnace of glinting light. When we were tired we waded out of the sea, the water running off our bodies so that we seemed to be on fire, and lay on the sand to eat. Then, as the wine was opened at the end of the meal, as if by arrangement, a few fireflies appeared in the olives behind us – a sort of overture to the show.

First of all there were just two or three green specks, sliding smoothly through the trees, winking regularly. But gradually more and more appeared, until parts of the olive grove were lit with a weird green glow. Never had we seen so many fireflies congregated in one spot; they flicked through the trees in swarms, they crawled on the grass, the bushes and the olive trunks, they drifted in swarms over our heads and landed on the rugs, like green embers. Glittering streams of them flew out over the bay, swirling over the water, and then, right on cue, the porpoises appeared, swimming in line into the bay, rocking rhythmically through the water, their backs as if painted with phosphorous. In the centre of the bay they swam round, diving and rolling, occasionally leaping high in the air and falling back into a conflagration of light. With the fireflies above and the illuminated porpoises below it was a fantastic sight. We could even see the luminous trails beneath the surface where the porpoises swam in fiery patterns across the sandy bottom, and when they leapt high in the air the drops of emerald glowing water flicked from them, and you could not tell if it was phosphorescence or fireflies you were looking at. For an hour or so we watched this pageant, and then slowly the fireflies drifted back inland and farther down the coast. Then the porpoises lined up and sped out to sea, leaving a flaming path behind them that flickered and glowed, and then died slowly, like a glowing branch laid across the bay.