Monday, February 21, 2005

 

Gerald Durell's "My Family and Other Animals"

In one word this book is superb! Brilliantly written, just the right length and teeming with personal experiences, anecdotes and beautiful imagery. Gerald Durrell's book is a fabulous first book of this author to begin.

Excerpt:
Spring had arrived and the island was sparkling with flowers. Lambs with flapping tails gambolled under the olives, crushing the yellow crocuses under their tiny hooves. Baby donkeys with bulbous and uncertain legs munched among the asphodels. The ponds and streams and ditches were tangled in chains of spotted toads' spawn, the tortoises were heaving aside their winter bedclothes of leaves and earth, and the first butterflies, winter-faded and frayed, were flitting wanly among the flowers.

A simple tale well told - well one can never have enough of it. Gerry, at ten years old, along with his entire family (though the father is of course absent) move to the sun soaked glory of Corfu. What then unfolds is an adventure interspersed with lessons from zoology, botany, ornithology and all other -ogies from various fields of science. Of course I have not had any such memorable lessons in science.

Gerry (though I have to say, I am astonished as his retentive power, to be able to write this book later on in life, for events he experienced when he was ten), his various animals all from Geronimo the gecko to Roger the biggest of them all dog, all aboard Bootle-Bumtrincket ( I kid you not!). His various teachers and the other myriad people who enter his life... its a delicious read.

Another excerpt (a particular favourite two lines of mine):
...the time had come, he thought, for me to go to somewhere like England or Switzerland to finish my education. In desparatation I argued against any such idea; I said i liked being half educated; you were so much more suprised at everything when you were ignorant.

There are moments in the book when you chuckle out loud and look around guitily, sure that people will write you off as a nutter but many a incident in the book are vivid and delightfully entertaining. Though more than once, whenever Gerry picked out a youngling from his nest and took it home, it would bother me. Why would he want to separate the little one from his mother, just so that his collection would prosper, I did not quite follow.

Another aspect of the book which is handled very well is the death of pets. It can often be a traumatic experience for a child and is it imbued with a lot of sensitivity and can easily be related to.

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

 

Am worried

That am reading enough but not finishing any of three books that I am reading...

1. Ismat Naama - the biography (a translation) of the (in)famous Urdu writer Sadat Hasan Manto by Jagdish Chander Wadhawan.
2. My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell - a lovely piece on travel, family and animals.
3. Slow Heat in Heaven by Sandra Brown - yes yes have to admit, she makes for great reading, when one wants to empty one's mind of other intolerable thoughts. Lotsa murders, thrilling and ranchy moments and the best male protagonists ever!

PS Will come back with small reviews for the first two and if you ask me about the third, will deny I ever read it!

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