My Family and Other Animals
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| My Family and Other Animals | |
| Author | Gerald Durrell |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Gerald Durrell's Corfu Saga |
| Subject(s) | Gerald Durrell's life in Corfu |
| Genre(s) | Autobiography |
| Publisher | Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd.; several others |
| Publication date | 1956 |
| Followed by | Birds, Beasts, and Relatives |
My Family and Other Animals is an autobiographical work by naturalist Gerald Durrell, telling of his childhood spent on the Greek island of Corfu between 1935 and 1939. It describes the life of the Durrell Family on the island in a humorous manner, and also richly discusses the fauna of the island. It is the first and most famous of Durrell's Corfu trilogy, together with Birds, Beasts and Relatives, and The Garden of the Gods.
Durrell had already written several successful books about his trips collecting animals in the wild for zoos when My Family and Other Animals came out in 1956. Its comic exaggeration of the foibles of his family — especially his eldest brother Lawrence Durrell, who later became a famous novelist — and heartfelt appreciation of the natural world made it very successful. It launched Durrell's career as owner of the Jersey Zoological Park in the Channel Islands, as well as novel-writer and television personality; and was also influential in the development of tourism in Corfu.[1]
Contents |
[edit] Summary
The book is the view of Gerald Durrell, aged 10 at the start of the saga, of his family, pets and life during a five-year sojourn on the island of Corfu. The book is divided into three sections, marking the three villas in which the family lived on the island. Apart from Gerald (the youngest) and Larry, the family comprised their vague widowed mother, the gun-mad Leslie, and diet-obsessed sister Margo together with Roger the dog. They are fiercely protected by their driver Spiro (Spyros "Americano" Chalikiopoulos) 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 visitors Larry invites to stay, and the local peasants who befriend the family.
The human comedy is interspersed by descriptions of the animal life which Gerald observes on his expeditions around the family homes, island, and seashore and which he frequently brings back and keeps as pets; these include Achilles the tortoise, Quasimodo the pigeon, Ulysses the Scops owl and numerous spiders.
[edit] Background
The book was written in 1955 at Bournemouth, where Durrell was recuperating from a severe attack of jaundice. Whereas Durrell often claimed to find writing a chore, this was different: his then wife Jacquie recalled "Never have I known Gerry work as he did then; it seemed to pour out of him".[2] It was also carefully constructed: Durrell maintained "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."[3]
The book was instantly very successful. Jacquie Durrell recalled that:
My Family and Other Animals was an overwhelming success, as none of us ever doubted it would be. It had everything that a best seller should have - an exotic island, a crazy family and lots of animals. It breathed sunshine and freedom, and even the critics loved it. Ten years later, the book continues to outsell all the other books, and although it has made us many friends all over the world, it has unfortunately turned Corfu into a tourist attraction.[4]
Although the book is presented as autobiographical and hence factual (if not always completely objective), the events described cannot always be taken as literally true — in particular Larry, who is described as living together with the rest of his family, was not in fact sharing a house with the Durrells during their sojourn on Corfu, instead living separately with his wife Nancy, 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 (World War II) is not given. However, the book does succeed in preserving the impressions of ten to fifteen year old Gerald extremely vividly and with a great deal of light-hearted humour. Despite the omissions and inaccuracies, Lawrence 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".[1]
Ironically, because Durrell never had any formal education, the book was on occasion set as a G.C.E. English Literature coursebook.
The book was first published by Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd. in 1956 and in paperback by Penguin Books in 1959 and has remained in print ever since.
[edit] Adaptations
[edit] Television
My Family and Other Animals was made into a BBC television series in 1987 written by Charles Wood and directed by Peter Barber-Fleming. It starred Hannah Gordon and Brian Blessed. In 2005 it was remade by the BBC into a one-off 90-minute comedy-drama, starring Eugene Simon as the young Gerry, this adaptation was written by Simon Nye. [1]
[edit] Theatre
In 2006 the Jersey Arts Centre's Theatre in Education company produced a stage version of My Family and Other Animals. Specially commissioned in celebration of the 50 years since its initial publication in 1956. Directed and written by Daniel Austin, the play premiered on 23 February 2007 at Rouge Bouillon school. It is aimed to raise awareness of conservation, family values and improve literacy in children. [2]
[edit] Title
Several works have referenced the title of Durrel's book, including Simon Doonan's memoir Nasty: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints, and Josephine Feeney's novel My Family and Other Natural Disasters; In the Discworld series of books, there is reference to a fictional book titled My Family and Other Werewolves.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Botting, Douglas (1999). Gerald Durrell — the authorised biography. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-255660-X.
- ^ Durrell, Jacquie (1967). Beasts in My Bed. Collins.
- ^ Hughes, David (1997). Himself & Other Animals — a portrait of Gerald Durrell. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-180167-2.
- ^ Durrell, Jacquie (1967). Beasts in My Bed. Collins.
