Some people discover Lawrence Durrell's novels (eg The Alexandria Quartet) in their late teens. I discovered him before I became a teenager. Maybe I was just thirteen.
I was asked to contribute a review of "White Eagles Over Serbia" to the school magazine (see above). It remains my favourite Lawrence Durrell book, alongside "Prospero's Cell" and "Bitter Lemons". Strange to think that he was writing "Bitter Lemons" and possibly working on "White Eagles" when living near Shaftesbury, Dorset (at Stone Cottage, Milkwell near Donhead St. Andrew) a year before I reviewed the book at school in Sparkford, Somerset. His daughter, Sappho, attended the local village school and was rapidly acquiring a broad Dorset accent. He complains in a letter to Henry Miller (October 1956) about Hardy country "where the people talk in the identical tiresome moralising way they do in Hardy".
"Everything is serene and bland as suet", he writes.
My little book review is of little but sentimental interest. I could clearly learn a lot about book reviewing from Chris Holmes, who has just published an exemplary review of my "Ionian Islands and Epirus" in ISLAND magazine (Summer 2010).
Even my reading tastes are regressing. I've just enjoyed another adventure story for "young adults", the classic Dorset smuggling tale called "Moonfleet" (J. Meade Falkner, 1898). I found it a lot more readable than Sartre's "Nausea", begun again for the fifteenth time...or indeed, Lawrence Durrell's "Avignon Quintet", which sits like a brick on my shelf.
It seems that "White Eagles Over Serbia" was revised by Joan Pepper. The secret of its success?
I think that is an excellent review. It is to the point and gives you a real flavour of both the book and the critic! Bravo!
ReplyDeleteAlex from Bermuda