Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals: an unlikely family under the Greek sun.

Author and Title: Gerald Durrell – My Family and Other Animals

Summary: A naturalist memoir that’s actually a comedy of manners—filled with geckos, shotguns, and sharp British sarcasm.

For whom: Perfect for readers who love intelligent humour, unpretentious travel writing, and animals with more personality than some humans.

My rating: (5/5) A classic to read (or reread) as a reminder that writing well also means not taking yourself too seriously.

If you’re a devoted reader of P.G. Wodehouse and a lover of David Attenborough’s nature documentaries, Gerald Durrell is your man.

First published in 1956, My Family and Other Animals is the first volume of the so-called “Corfu Trilogy” and recounts (more or less) the five years Durrell spent as a child on the Greek island of Corfu with his eccentric British family.The “more or less” is crucial, because this is not a realistic memoir—it’s a sparkling comedy disguised as a zoological autobiography.

A family that’s not quite British, but very theatrical

The real protagonists here are the Durrells themselves: the ever-present, tea-bearing, slipper-wearing mother; Larry (yes, that Lawrence Durrell), the budding writer and full-time contrarian; Leslie, obsessed with firearms; Margo, perpetually caught in a teenage identity crisis.Young Gerald—our narrator—is the silent, sharp-eyed observer, a precocious naturalist with an ironic edge.

Their life in 1930s Corfu is a parade of domestic disasters, uncontrollable animals, and local characters so bizarre they seem fictional. But no—they were real. Or at least real enough to deserve a place in literary memory.

More animals than metaphors (thankfully)

Durrell truly loved animals—and it shows. His descriptions of insects, birds, turtles and dogs are vivid, detailed, but never dull.There’s deep comedy in the chaotic coexistence of wild nature and human nature. Bats in the living room, adopted gulls, praying mantises on the breakfast table—every creature becomes an excuse to tell a bigger truth about the disorder of the world, always with lightness, but never with mockery.

And that’s the book’s strength: it’s not a travel diary, not an ethology manual, not a novel. It’s a brilliantly executed hybrid that makes you laugh without being silly, and teaches you something about biology without pretending to be serious.

A luminous, pre-Instagram Greece

Durrell’s Corfu jumps off the page with visual force. You feel the sun through gnarled olive trees, the sharp scent of wild thyme, the crystal-clear sea made for childhood wrecks and underwater adventures. Whitewashed houses, chirping cicadas, silent fishermen, colourful markets.It’s a poor, pre-tourist Greece—slightly ramshackle but deeply authentic, where hospitality isn’t a profession but a state of mind.

Corfu is portrayed as a space between Mediterranean wilderness and domestic chaos: a small anarchic paradise, perfect for both lizard collections and a wildly out-of-place English family. By the end, you’ll want to go yourself—not to “find yourself,” but just to see if there are still corners of the world where beauty hasn’t been swallowed by a stock photo gallery.

Why read Gerald Durrell today (yes, he still holds up)

In an age where every trip comes with six filters and twenty hashtags, My Family and Other Animals is a breath of fresh air.It’s a book about being in a place—with curiosity, humour, and openness to the unexpected. No eco-moralism, no performative anxiety, no need to prove anything.

Durrell’s style is quintessential “1950s British,” but without the tedium of five o’clock tea. His writing is fluid, visual, rhythmical, and full of deadly one-liners, delivered with the kind of understatement that makes you laugh despite the restraint. A lost art, in an age where everything must either be tear-jerking or outraged.