My Family and Other Animals (Macmillan Collector's Library)

Kudos to the seller. The book was even nicer than described. The condition is excellent. It arrived very quickly, just a few days after I ordered it, and I've just started to read it, but it's enjoyable already -- even the introduction is funny. I saw the Amazon Prime video series, so I know what to expect, and from what I've read so far, I am very pleased. Thank you !!!

A friend told me of the author, Gerald Durrell, and his books. The friend remembered reading his novels when growing-up; Durrell was a favorite because of his descriptions of animals and places around the world. This novel is about his boyhood years with his family when they lived in Greece (he and the family are English). Durrell's writing is entertaining as well as vivid-- and the best, descriptive writing I have read in years. I look forward to reading more of his works.

What a delightful surprise this book was! We loved the Durrells in Corfu on Masterpiece Theater, but it never occurred to me that little Gerry who spent much of his boyhood running wild around the island would be such a gifted writer. The language is beautiful and evocative without ever being pretentious. He has a wonderful talent for writing humor. Granted he, his family, and the inhabitants of Cordu provide ample source material for the humor but writing it down in a way that can delight a reader and inspire laughter takes talent. The book covers part of the time that the British Durrell family (widowed mother Louise and her four children) lived on the island of Corfu. It is charming, engaging, and highly diverting. The book is set in the middle 1930’s and that adds interest. It is not remotely dated. I can practically guarantee that you will finish this book and feel less stress and anxiety than you did before you read it. And, if you are like me, you will plunge forward into the rest of the trilogy.

Great book of an English boy's adventures and daily life growing up in Greece with his family. It is well written with subtle humor throughout.

I was recommended this book to read on a trip to Greece. It has a number of hilarious anecdotes, and the author is very irreverent in descriptions of his family members, including his brother, author Lawrence Durrell. I laughed out loud many times. As a boy the author lived on the Greek island of Corfu for five years with his mother and three siblings. While he was there he spent most of his time studying and catching wild animals. The antics of his family and the animals are uproariously funny. Warning: some of the animals don't survive; such is life. Also, his brother Leslie is portrayed as an avid hunter and gun enthusiast, so if hunting shocks or offends you, it does occur in this book. The author grew up to be a respected wildlife advocate and conservationist, and this is a very fun memoir of his unorthodox childhood and the attempts of his various tutors to give him a solid educational grounding when all he wants to do is run around the island trying to catch animals. It is not meant to be a natural history of Corfu but more the adventures of a curious boy and his growing numbers of animal companions. It paints a glowing picture of the free rambles of a boy set loose on an unspoiled Greek island before 1939, when the family returned to England.

Who among us doesn't believe we have grown up in a zoo? Every family has its eccentric members, and the Durrell family is no exception. Emigrating from frigid Great Britain to the balmy shores of Corfu in 1935, ten-year-old Gerry details his growing interest in the biology of plants and animals. His family consists of an extremely tolerant widowed mother, oldest brother and aspiring author, Larry, aged twenty-three, brother, Larry, fascinated by guns, aged nineteen, and sister, Molly, obsessed with her complexion, aged eighteen. Roger, a faithful canine, comes from England with Gerry, and is a constant companion and witness to Gerry's adventures. Gerry introduces us to the residents of Corfu who influence the family, to the lengthy list of tutors who aid in Gerry's education, and to the series of houses that affect the family.I was impressed by the detailed descriptions found in this book. Gerry has incredible powers of observation whether they be scientific descriptions of sea life, the behavior of a species of bird, or the emotional reactions of family members to a particular event. All events are related with great respect and admiration yet with the detailed eye of a scientist.I can enthusiastically endorse this book which is NOT a work of fiction. I have just purchased the second book of this trilogy and can't wait to get started.

I read this book every couple of years, I am so comfortable with it that i bought the audible version and listen to it when I can't sleep. Between the soothing English accent and beloved story - it helps me drop off in no time. It is like a child's bedtime story to me.

Enjoyed listening to this more than reading. Learned a lot about animals found on Corfu. My favorite character is Jerry, narrator and naturalist. I sometimes became annoyed with Jerry’s older siblings who often complained or acted only from self interest.

había visto algunos episodios de la serie televisiva y me encantó....el libro igualmente. La presentación del este libro en especial me pareció excelente. Ando buscando otros de esta misma editorial porque valen la pena.

この本のことも著者のことも全く知らず、familyもanimalｓという意味なのだろうか、と思いながら読み始めました。子どもの頃からシートンなどの動物ものが大好きだったので、たちまち夢中になりました。第2次世界大戦の少し前に、イギリスの未亡人が4人の子どもたちを連れてギリシャのコルフ島で生活を始めます。長男はもう20歳をこえていますが、動物好きの一番下の男の子はまだ子供で、島の自然にたちまち魅せられます。読み終えて、この本が1950年代に書かれたこと、著者はファーブルを尊敬していて、動物保護運動を始め、今もそれが受け継がれていることを知りました。当時のイギリスの中産階級の生活の様子がよく分かり、家族のそれぞれの性格や島に住む人々のことなどもユーモアたっぷりに実に巧みに書かれています。もし子供の時にこの本を読んだら、それを理解できずに投げ出していたかもしれません。むしろ大人になって出あえてかえってよかったと思います。

A mí me gustó mucho la forma en que el Autor Gerald Durrell, describe la naturaleza. Es elegantemente literaria usando unas muy bellas metáforas.Es divertida y la forma como describe a la familia, es muy interesante. También las aventuras de él,( Gerry) el niño, ,son ilustrativas por la forma en que comenta cada aspecto de los insectos y bichos que encuentra en ese paraíso de la Isla de Corfu.Estoy segura de que, a las personas amantes de los animales, les encantaría leerlo.Lo voy a recomendar a una sobrina que adora a los animales.Muchas gracias

イギリスの動物学者であり､動物園の園長であり､児童文学者である筆者が、第2次世界大戦前のつかの間の平和を味わった、ギリシャの島での美しい(?)子供時代。本人も変っていれば母親もとんでる!こんな子供を育てるには、ギリシャしかなかったのかもしれない。笑い笑いの連続の間に、ギリシャの自然と人間の豊かさがいっぱいに詰まっています。池澤夏樹さんによる翻訳版もまたお勧めです！(実際にギリシャに行かれて翻訳されたようで…｡)

I first read this, Volume 1 of Durrell’s Corfu Childhood books, when I was probably around the same age as the period of his life he is describing. The book absolutely resonated with me, with its love of landscape. Durrell rather ascribes almost a sentience, not only towards the ‘other animals’ which this book is largely about, but to the very mountains, vegetation, winds, waves, sunlight and rain. This was very much my own view of the natural world, so reading Durrell, as a child, was a kind of coming home to how I felt about ‘nature’However……..at the time I read this, Durrell’s sensibilities gave me clear indication that I was, after all, not going to be cut out to be a naturalist myself. Although a clear lover of the wild, unconfined, natural world, and of the animal kingdom, he quickly made me realise that I was a definitely restricted speciesist – plants were wonderful, but my real love was for the warm-blooded furred and feathered creatures. Durrell delights in all of it, the slithering, the buzzing, the finny, the scaled, and anything which scuttles on somewhere between 6, 8 and a multiplicity of uncountable legs.I had utterly forgotten (carefully buried the memory) from whence my shrieking horror of a species I have never met, in the flesh, came from:“Up on the hills among the dark cypress and the heather shoals of butterflies danced and twisted like wind-blown confetti, pausing now and then on a leaf to lay a salvo of eggs. The grasshoppers and locusts whirred like clockwork under my feet, and flew drunkenly across the heather, their leaves shining in the sun. Among the myrtles the mantids moved, lightly, carefully, swaying slightly, the quintessence of evil. They were lank and green, with chinless faces and monstrous globular eyes, frosty gold, with an expression of intense, predatory madness in them. The crooked arms, with their fringes of sharp teeth, would be raised in mock supplication to the insect world, so humble, so fervent, trembling slightly when a butterfly flew too close”It is (I hope) clear what a wonderfully observant, carefully crafting writing Durrell is, as well as, of course, ditto, a naturalist. He regarded his older brother, Laurence, as the writer of the family, and only began his own (highly successful) books about his idyllic, (in his eyes, as a young naturalist) eccentric, anarchic time on Corfu, and his later books about his zoological expeditions around the world as an adult, in order to make money to finance them, and his own zoo.That quoted paragraph shows also a rather assured and filmic, dramatic sense. He surely knows how to craft a scene, to build narrative, climax, change of pace and mood. I was lulled into a deceptively tranquil, dreamy, Edenic scene, with those wafts of butterflies, before the scene darkens, and the reader can almost feel a tension rising mood music, ratcheted up to the insecty equivalent of that shower scene in Psycho!Durrell is a wonderful writer. Here there is a mixture of no doubt absolutely precise observation of the natural world and a certain amount of writerly shaping to emphasise the entertaining aspect provided by his strongly defined, individual, family members: remarkably tolerant Mother, the almost comically artistic/intellectual elder brother Larry, with his equally Bohemian ‘set’ paying visits to what Larry was offering as open house artistic colony with sunshine, vino, and food on tap. Gerry’s other brother Leslie, the practical one, happily tinkering with building boats, cleaning guns, and shooting the wildlife, and sister Margo, defined as romantic and a bit of a magnet for local and visiting swains. There are various brilliantly structured set pieces around Gerry and a succession of arriving and departing tutors, vainly trying to find ways to teach the budding naturalist the basics of an academic syllabus, spicing the dull stuff, ‘If it takes x number of men x hours to dig a trench’ with inserts culled from the natural world – forget men and trenches, substitute tortoises looking to safely lay their eggs.Best of all is an extended dramatic French farce sketch, involving snakes and renegade birds discovered in unlikely places, during a huge all day party, for family, visiting friends and locals. This had me snorting, chuckling and guffawing in an otherwise silent tube carriage. Irrepressibly joyous writing.“Tea would arrive, the cakes squatting on cushions of cream, toast in a melting shawl of butter, cups agleam, and a faint wisp of steam rising from the teapot spout”This book, and its sequels, was turned into a successful TV mini-series in the late 80s. One I felt unable to watch. The power of Durrell’s writing creating those images of mantid malevolence meant I was scared in case they featured in the natural history bits!There is such joy, such delight, such warmth in the writing, and, like the family, falling under the spell of the landscape, the reader falls in love with Durrell’s gloriously unclichéd, visceral evocation“Gradually the magic of the island settled over us as gently and clingingly as pollen. Each day had a tranquillity, a timelessness, about it, so that you wished it would never end. But then the dark skin of night would peel off and there would be a fresh day waiting for us, glossy and colourful as a child’s transfer and with the same tinge of unreality”