MY FAMILY AND OTHER ANIMALS

Charming, comical (but slightly fictionalized, Wikipedia has since informed me) memoir by Gerald Durrell of the naturalist’s childhood years living with his eccentric family on the Greek island of Corfu. Not surprisingly, there are a lot of nature descriptions, and they are beautifully written; if I grew impatient with them from time to time, it was only because I was itching to get to the next anecdote about the wacky Durrells themselves. I don’t see myself rereading this over and over (I won’t end up adding it to my library), but I’d recommend it (as well as the recent BBC film adaptation), and I’m mildly interested in someday reading the other two books in the “Corfu Trilogy,” Birds, Beasts, and Relatives and The Garden of the Gods.