MONSIEUR

by Lawrence Durrell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1974

It's Avignon this time, but again a place with the dense voluted history that Durrell's books require as mold-bloom needs old cheese; and again familiar personnel make the diplomatic life a base for vaguely sociopathic activities. Bruce, a thick, blond FO doctor, and his two beloveds Piers and Sylvie, a lynx-eyed and very irregular pair of wealthy orphans, had sustained for a lifetime the passion that overtook them en trois as teen-agers at Verfeuille, the heart-meltingly crumbly estate that passed to Piers through many hands from an ancestor who turned traitor to the Templars. Piers is dead now, of course -- just before the book began, murder or suicide or something, it has to do with his religion; and Sylvie had to be put away long ago -- she appears now to believe she is a Rossetti bookplate. Even so, in its heyday their relationship mirrored the triumvirate power of the cosmos -- you know, two males and a minx of a spiritual girl -- as Akkad the banker-gnostic told them when he flew them out to the desert to partake of drugs and mummia (a sort of jerky made from human flesh) and to contemplate the snake Monsieur. Rob Sutcliffe, the novelist, has written all about it (we are obliged to read) and other characters offer their views to make the perspective as incestuous as the situation. Sabine, scholar-gypsy-heiress-tantric lover, reminisces from Rob's flank, as it were, about Rob's boy-woman wife Pia, her friend and Bruce's sister, who took off with a black lesbian called Trash, as if she needed a motive; and Rob's dull young doppelganger Toby studies the Templars, another route that leads to. . .whatever the subject is. Gnosticism and ""correct sex"" seems the best guess. The whole thing is a prettified bunch of rubbish, like the clutter in Piers' apartments (books and paintings all slung about, and gold-tipped cigarette butts), and Bruce is quite tight to remark, ""We were old-fashioned, we belonged to the age of piety."" Decadence does indeed, and it is only a short step from the norm here to Rob Sutcliffe's final statement -- pissing in his opera cloak.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1974

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1974

Categories: FICTION