My Family and Other Animals
In 1935 the widowed Louisa Durrell moved her four children from grey England to the Greek island of Corfu, where the youngest, Gerry, spent five of the happiest years of his life. My Family and Other Animals turns those years into one of the great memoirs of childhood, with Gerry roaming the olive groves collecting scorpions, tortoises, and owls while his older brothers, sister, and their mother stage a rolling domestic farce around him. His brother Larry, later the novelist Lawrence Durrell, provides much of the comedy, along with a parade of tutors, taxi drivers, and expatriates. Durrell writes about the natural world with unusual precision and about his family with unusual love. The book has stayed in print for nearly seventy years for good reason.
What you might want to know about My Family and Other Animals
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Gerald Durrell's classic memoir of five sunlit years on Corfu with his eccentric family, in a house overrun with scorpions, owls, and unforgettable relatives.
Yes. Lewis has named My Family and Other Animals as one of his favorite comic memoirs and one of the books he most enjoys rereading, mentioning it in reading lists and interviews.
Both. It is often given to older children for its animal adventures, and adults keep reading it for the family comedy and the quality of the prose.
My Family and Other Animals was written by Gerald Durrell, published in 1956 by Penguin Books.
My Family and Other Animals is 273 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, My Family and Other Animals takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
My Family and Other Animals is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
