My Family and Other Animals (Macmillan Collector's Library)

My Family and Other Animals is one of my all time favorite books. It is laugh out loud funny. Read this Book and escape to a gorgeous Greek Island with a hilarious and endearing British family. Based on the author's boyhood memories of the five years his family lived in Corfu, it is written with fantastic wit and humour. It's a book to read more than once and listening to it on Audible is also an excellent choice. Prepare to meet memorable characters and interesting creatures. Explore Corfu with Gerry Durrel, his mother, brothers, sister and their wonderful Dog, Roger. I absolutely love this Book and highly recommend it.

If you watched the Durrels in Corfu on streaming media, the series was very entertaining. This book is very good too, although this book is more focused from Gerald Durrel's point of view as an adult. The book is excellent and greatly detailed. I won't complain, but I learned more about birds and insects than I ever knew. I found myself doing frequent google searches to figure out what certain terms and phrases meant.

I read this book years and years ago in some public library in some small town far far away. I could vividly remember some scenes but couldn't for the life of me remember the text's title. I rediscovered it thanks to a "hilarious books" thread at a forum I'm a part of, and am so glad to have finally found it! This book should be required reading for every little kid who loves animals -- and what kid doesn't? The narrator moves to a (beautifully described) villa in Greece and lives an idyllic existence there, collecting a real menagerie of pets as he does so -- and his adventures obtaining/living with those pets are as funny as they are charming. His interactions with his family members are just as hilarious (I love in particular his prissy older sister, and his perpetually sniffling mother). Re-reading this as an adult, I have come to appreciate the author's skill as a writer -- this book made me want to visit Greece and find my own little cove with hot pebbles for a beach and a brilliantly blue sea. Sigh. Also, I want a praying mantis. This book is going on my "Dearly Beloved" collection in my Kindle.

What a delightful surprise this book was! We loved the Durrells in Corfu on Masterpiece Theater, but it never occurred to me that little Gerry who spent much of his boyhood running wild around the island would be such a gifted writer. The language is beautiful and evocative without ever being pretentious. He has a wonderful talent for writing humor. Granted he, his family, and the inhabitants of Cordu provide ample source material for the humor but writing it down in a way that can delight a reader and inspire laughter takes talent. The book covers part of the time that the British Durrell family (widowed mother Louise and her four children) lived on the island of Corfu. It is charming, engaging, and highly diverting. The book is set in the middle 1930’s and that adds interest. It is not remotely dated. I can practically guarantee that you will finish this book and feel less stress and anxiety than you did before you read it. And, if you are like me, you will plunge forward into the rest of the trilogy.

My Family and Other Animals was published in 1956 and has never been out of print. This book is more than a deeply nostalgic view of a magical land or a hilarious narrative of colorful characters. It is a biography written with some of the most eloquent, evocative prose in the English language. This book will endure as long as adults have childhoods.

I started reading the author's Rosy is my Relative which was hilarious. So I tried this book and kept waiting for a theme about people or activities, but it turned out to be a long winded description of the author's family on an island in Greece. He ability to clearly and accurately is admirable. I simply got tired of the descriptions blurring from on chapter to the next. Sadly, I simply gave up 3/4's through the book. Try Roxy as it is much better.

I was recommended this book to read on a trip to Greece. It has a number of hilarious anecdotes, and the author is very irreverent in descriptions of his family members, including his brother, author Lawrence Durrell. I laughed out loud many times. As a boy the author lived on the Greek island of Corfu for five years with his mother and three siblings. While he was there he spent most of his time studying and catching wild animals. The antics of his family and the animals are uproariously funny. Warning: some of the animals don't survive; such is life. Also, his brother Leslie is portrayed as an avid hunter and gun enthusiast, so if hunting shocks or offends you, it does occur in this book. The author grew up to be a respected wildlife advocate and conservationist, and this is a very fun memoir of his unorthodox childhood and the attempts of his various tutors to give him a solid educational grounding when all he wants to do is run around the island trying to catch animals. It is not meant to be a natural history of Corfu but more the adventures of a curious boy and his growing numbers of animal companions. It paints a glowing picture of the free rambles of a boy set loose on an unspoiled Greek island before 1939, when the family returned to England.

This is a book to keep and also to gift to those you love. From the Dust Cover with the charming drawing of Gerald as a child in Corfu, the Robin's-eggs blue linen cover, the beautiful Oak-leaf entwined end-paper, gild-edged pages to the thoughful, timeless silver-blue satin ribbon bound into the spine to "keep you place securely till you eagerly reopen so you can continue the delightful, comical and charming story of a boy who loved all living things on this sun-kissed island during a time of innocence between the Wars. A self-taught naturalist who learned preservational and conservation by observing with child wonder and the gentle guidance of the Island people who embraces this young, brown-legged Little Lord.