Weird, I was going to start a thread about this myself. I read My *Family and Other Animals * a few years ago and loved it - it’s still one of my favourite books and the only one to make me laugh out loud no matter how many times I read it.
The Entrance is just about the scariest thing I’ve ever read. I read alone in a candle-lit room one night in Greece and nearly frightened myself to death.
I remembered a cool thing in the biography that I wanted to mention. When Gerry was still alive, the Jersey Zoo was having some kind of milestone or anniversary, and the staff presented him with a handcrafted silver matchbox. The matchbox opened like a regular matchbox, and inside were a silver mother scorpion and several silver scorpion babies. You readers of My Family And Other Animals will remember the scorpion/matchbox incident - which was one of the funniest things he ever wrote. I was very touched by the zoo staff’s memory of this chapter and the appropriateness of the gift.
I love his books and have read them since I was young. I have 19 of them and I also have My family and other Animals on DVD, so you are not alone.
I read them all when I was a kid. I really loved them.
The Corfu books are, to me, the kind of books one reads in youth that sink down over the years and become part of you.
I don’t even have to read them anymore.
My parents started a zoo, in England. What you think? 
‘My family and other animals’ was actually one of the optional books to study for the English GCSE (exams taken at age 15-16) when I was at school. Not the one my school opted for, admittedly.
I’m pretty sure I’ve read the full set, though the quality really did drop off for the last few, in my view, even more of a drop than the one already noted from when Jacquie left. Just phoning it in really, and a lot of the characterisation dropped off from funny and quirky to somewhat patronising and uncomfortable.
I’ve also been to Jersey zoo, and my Mum even did a conservation course there (which included meeting Lee, this being a few years after Gerald’s death). This led to one of the most surreal conversations I’ve ever been part of, a few years later; we were on a family holiday in Kenya, staying in a remote campsite just outside the Maasai Mara reserve and the Maasai warrior who owned the site came over to chat and see we were OK. The conversation turned to conservation, and he mentioned that he was in the process of applying for the exact same course Mum had been on at Jersey zoo a few years earlier. Just… small world, huh?
Add another fan here. I started off with *Fillets of Plaice * when i was at school because I was intrigued by the title , went on to read his Corfu books , and he’s been a favorite ever since .
I consumed that book like it was potato chips! Loved it! (I like big books and I cannot lie!)
Read the naturalist books – Bafut Beagles and others-- in the 70s or 80s, and quite enjoyed 'em. Na fine thing this.
Another, chiming in as a long-time Durrell lover. I have the advantage here, of being British: discovered and began reading his earlier books when I was aged maybe seven or eight (when said earlier books were still relatively recent); and went on from there.
Am largely on the same page as many posters here, re finding the quality of his earlier stuff somewhat superior to his output “later on”. Am a bit surprised to have seen no mention of * Three Singles to Adventure*, his account of his “collecting” trip to British Guiana (now Guyana) in I think 1951 – have always found this one a total delight. Likewise *The Drunken Forest * – though there’s something of a sad element to this book, in that Durrell was a caught in Paraguay by a political upheaval (I believe, that which brought the notorious Stroessner to power in 1954): he had to abandon nearly all the creatures he’d collected in Paraguay, and flee the country in a tiny plane, bringing along just a very few of his most precious captures.
Much enjoyed the earlier books about his family / their eccentricities / Corfu; later non-natural-history material by him, I was less keen on. I find his pure fiction on the whole, ponderously facetious and not particularly entertaining or funny. (Had heard of The Entrance, but haven’t yet read it – certainly seems like something “interestingly different” for this guy.)
I feel that there are a couple of elements of his early books, with a potential for landing him in trouble nowadays. With those set in Cameroon: although he clearly very much liked his African associates and employees, his portrayal of their unsophisticated attitudes and comical way with the English language might, I suspect, lead some modern “goodthinkers” to take a poor view of his perceived position on racial issues. A sensible “take” is, I feel, that Durrell’s writings here come obviously from a place of affection, not scorn / hate; and that his Cameroon trips took place nearly seventy years ago, in very different times from now.
I have read that though Durrell had for sure a talent for writing, and wrote most readably and entertainingly; he did not in the least enjoy the writing process: most of it was, for him, slow and difficult – often sheer torture. He plugged away at it, though – to make money for his conservation work, and because by writing, he was able to give pleasure to many people.
Although no one’s mentioned it, PBS’s showing of the first 2 episodes of “The Durrells In Corfu” must have reawakened an interest in the subject - check your local stations blah blah blah:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/programs/features/spotlight/meet-durrells-s1/
I remember slogging through about 2/3rds of the Alexandria Quartet at least 30 years ago before finally giving up in despair. Maybe I was reading the wrong Durrell.
My personal favourite is “Menagerie Manor” and especially the hilariously funny
“The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium” -in particular the story about the hopeless Greek ferry service. It’s humour of sterling quality.
I’ve read several and enjoyed them a lot. The most memorable scene (don’t remember which book) was when a friend of his got a cut on his hand and was in a lot of pain. Gerald forgot basic first aid and dumped salt on the cut. OW!
It’s a very interesting take, I have enjoyed the first two episodes.
Oh, one issue- on Larrys Operation, Theo *is *a doctor.
[Disclaimer here: Philliam hasn’t read any of his books (okay, I’m remiss at telling him what to read, obviously. But then again, I’m not a huge fan of Pynchon.) He asked me, Ms. Philliam, to chime in here.]
I don’t remember when I stumbled across Gerald Durrell’s books, but once I did, I was hooked. With a capital H. I have hunted down and bought all of his books (one perk of working in a new/used bookstore), and have read them all more than once.
Just a couple of things to mention:
Somehow we brainwashed our kid into liking them as well. If I ever win the lottery, we’re all going to Corfu (although I guess it’s touristy as all hell these days).
His writing did decline over the years. If you read his biography, you’ll realize that his health was pretty damned shitty towards the end - including a liver transplant. I take that into account.
He started writing to help fund his zoological expeditions and then the Jersey Zoo. He is one of the people I would choose to invite to The World’s Best Dinner Party, as I expect he was just as fun in person as in print.
I’m glad that other people thought his one (sad, that) horror short story was good. I wish he had just done more writing, period. He, like his brother, had great writing talent.
This is rather an aside, but when the whole brouhaha came out about ‘A Million Little Pieces’ by James Frey, I had to roll my eyes. Hard. People who castigated him for not being 100% factual should take a look at Durrell’s memoirs. They aren’t 100% factual. For example, Larry Durrell lived apart from them with his wife, not with them. As Gerald said, he wrote it the way he did to emphasize family and togetherness. An autobiography is one thing, but memoirs can be (and are) skewed, perception-wise. But the books are wonderful, fun, enjoyable, and get the point across.
And lastly, and to me, most importantly, is the fact that he campaigned HARD for wildlife. For preservation of species and habitat. We need more people with his frame of mind - especially these days.
Oh yeah, one last comment: the new BBC series is… adequate. As the producer said, they are putting the emphasis on the mother in it. Um, okay. It’s a pity, tho, that they are mishmashing the books to get what they want, and some of the personalities aren’t coming through the way I think they should. The casting is great; the script, IMHO, not so much. But I’m a diehard fan, so…
A “Durrell” reflection at random, from memory of reading long ago his book Two In The Bush, about I think his only visit to Britain’s Antipodes: in 1961 or ’62, in the course of making a wildlife film series for the BBC. He visited (in that order) New Zealand, Australia, and Malaysia – of which last, from the book, I regrettably recall absolutely nothing.
No offence meant to any New Zealand Dopers; but I remember that in the book, Durrell expressed not being greatly taken with NZ (though appreciative of the good wildlife stuff which he did encounter there). It struck him as a prissy, inhibited, rather joyless place; plus, he considered that the New Zealanders had not done particularly well by the islands’ native fauna and flora – much reckless introduction of predatory and / or competitive alien species, and the undertaking of sheep-farming on a damagingly huge scale. (He was pleased to have the chance to meet a kakapo – NZ’s strange flightless nocturnal “owl parrot” – long an extremely rare species: Durrell’s kakapo was in captivity, and the species was then at such a low ebb, that he suggested the possibility of this specimen’s actually being the last of its kind. Happily things have improved somewhat for the kakapo, since then: current total population now reckoned 123 – surviving with much human help, on small island reserves from which predators have been eradicated.)
Durrell proceeded from New Zealand to Australia, with which place he immediately – re general character and atmosphere – fell in love; although he found there, much in the way of bad and destructive doings on the wildlife scene. Dealing admittedly here, in clichés and stereotypes: with Durrell being a rumbustious, extrovert sort and a lover of most things in life, it’s unsurprising that he preferred, and found congenial, Australia; rather than its more restrained and low-key neighbour.
When I was in seventh grade our Language Arts textbook had an excerpt from My Family and Other Animals (the bit with the scorpions in the matchbox). I always remembered the title and got the audiobook out of the library years later. Now I have the Corfu trilogy on my kindle.
I’m a Gerald Durrell addict. My Family and Other Animals, The Garden of the Gods, A Zoo in my Luggage, The Bafut Beagles, Fillets of Plaice, The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium, and Menagerie Manor. Possibly others that I’m not remembering. Great stuff.
He mentions in the preface to his second “Cameroon” book that he was a bit worried about how the Fon had received his portrayal in the first book (this guy: Achirimbi II - Wikipedia), as Durrell described him (as you say, affectionately) as a smart guy who governed his state quite well, but who also had a prodigious appetite for sex and alcohol. He wrote the guy and apparently he didn’t mind the way the book desceibed him at all.
Most people speaking what for Cameroonians would probably be a second language at best (or more likely third or fourth) are going to speak it somewhat comically.