BIRDS, BEASTS, AND RELATIVES

by Gerald Durrell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1969

A happy and welcome reprise-with-variations on the author's tremendously entertaining My Family and Other Animals (1957)--same cast, same landscape (Corfu), some reoccurring animals, comparable hilarity and delightful young-naturalist explorations. Gerald was ten, brother Lawrence twenty-three, and there was brother Leslie, sister Margo and Mother, vaguely troubled or happily bemused by her household. Assiduous dung beetles, a lark-eating spider, entrancing little seahorses, snakes surprised in flagrante delicto, a marvel of a dancing bear--all are recalled with practiced exactitude, a rakish enjoyment of the bizarre, and best of all, the wildfire curiosity of a boy's perspective. The Durrell family, as thunderingly self-assertive as a hoot of owls, received some engaging visitors: a boisterous sculptor who cowed the family with a truly mean accordion; a raunchy sea captain who proposed to Mother; and various cut-ups. The Durrells under comical duress in Corfu amid birds and leggedy beasties.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1969

ISBN: 0142004405

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1969

Categories: NONFICTION