Durrell's 1957 espionage classic is just as fresh and exciting as ever. Methuen, intrepid British secret service veteran, tramps about the mountains of southern Serbia in search of the White Eagles, a band of rebels to Tito's regime who support the long-deposed Yugoslav royal family and have come across a great secret. Lovers of the spy genre will enjoy this book immensely. Those interested in the Balkans will revel in Durrell's descriptions of the landscape and people of Serbia. The White Eagles do exist, in fact a modern incarnation was a paramilitary band responsible for much terror and mayhem in Bosnia in the 1992-5 war.

I think of this book as 'Durrell Lite'. While Durrell's language is as magisterial and richly evocative as always, reading his account of a package tour of Sicily is a bit like going to hear Pavarotti sing in a small high school auditorium with poor lighting. There just isn't enough scope for his vast powers of observation within the confines of this brief, hurried tour. Instead of colorful locals, for example, Durrell gives us cranky, mostly English tourists, inconveniently falling ill in cramped hotels. If only he had gone to Sicily on his own, to spend a summer or a year, what a different book this might have been!

In his 1977 account of a bus tour of Sicily, Sicilian Carousel, Lawrence Durrell says "all the characters in this volume are imaginary." In some sense it is a novel about Martine, a friend on Cyprus who lived in Sicily and often urged the narrator to visit Sicily. The narrator is guided by and confirms many of her analyses of places and histories and also portrays an international cast of fellow travelers (a French couple with a child, a Japanese couple, and various English types). What the narrator and Martine write is mostly perspicacious both about Sicily and about traveling. Reading the book is like joining the conversation between Martine and the narrator about Sicily and seems a better book to read after one has some experience of the island to compare to the impressions of the now-dead Durrell and the long-dead Martine.

(The occasional poems are underwhelming, though I like the line "They also die who only sit and wait.")

"Nunquam" forwards the action of "Tunc," with Felix still struggling to free himself from the Firm, this time by building an android of the dead Iolanthe for Julian. Like this synopsis, "Nunquam" doesn't make a whole lot of sense without the first novel already under your belt. I found this story duller than "Tunc"--the settings are less fantanstical and the plot even more perfunctory--but it makes the ideas Durrell wanted to get across in the series much clearer.

The all-controlling Firm is revealed as a symbol of our cultural, even genetic, programming: Felix's atempts to get free of it by running or fighting back are futile. Freedom comes, if at all, by understanding the inner psychological mechanisms at its heart. In Julian's case, this takes the form of the desire to resurrect and control Iolanthe. All the doubles from "Tunc" make better sense in "Nunquam," where Durrell explains the male/female binary--sexual and emotional love--as the only true foundation for a culture, and the one alternative to the contractual relations of possession & control that drive modern capitalist technology. Very '60s in a way--sex will set us free--but also oddly conservative in the idea that we surmount the problem of a corrupt culture through new forms of beauty and personal relations. What weakens this argument, if I understand it right, is that Durrell's sympathies seem much more with the lonely, impotent Julian, anxious to bring his dream woman to life, than with Felix & Benedicta, whose new-found love is totally unconvincing as they become willing bystanders to Julian's personal drama.

The "Alexandria Quartet" will probaly remain Durrell's best claim to fame, but I had a few fun evenings with this book and I bet you will too. On to the Avignon Quintet!!

This book is somewhat outdated, however, it remains a witty and intelligent satire of modern science. Despite the obscure humor and fascinating idiosyncrasies of it's characters, the subject matter is quite dark. It attempts a subtle warning against man's love-affair with technology.

A while back on rec.arts.books, someone asked for any recommendations of authors like P.G. Wodehouse. In the ensuing responses, this thin little volume by Durrell was mentioned. I recognized Durrell's name from my research into travel literature, and thought I'd give his humor a try. These are short stories, told to an unseen chronicler (and fellow diplomat) by an older collegue named Antrobus. The service is foreign, in a generic country name Vulgaria (a cute little dig at snobbish English diplomats). While the language is quite pleasant, and some of the situations quite amusing, what Durrell is missing is that sense of plot known as the conclusion (or, as a character says here, "the pay off"). Durrell tries, but never seems to get it right. I enjoyed it as a brief diversion (the book is less than 90 pages), but doubt I'll be looking for more.