Customer Reviews

The Alexandria Quartet

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I would have to be a far better writer than I am to do justice to a work like this, and it seems distinctly odd to be writing only the second review of this classic for Amazon. I first read it as a teen and missed nearly everything there was to delight me as a grownup. This is not a book for those who like linear literature or concise prose.

Durrell's prose is some of the lushest in my acquaintance. Almost every chapter begins with a word-picture that sucked me in and seduced me with a strong sense of place. Throughout the work, there are phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that jump off the page and insist on being read aloud to whoever is nearby.

His characters are colorful and deep, but their depths are not accessible at a glance any more than with real people. Durrell used a fascinating technique that reminds me of Pointilism and Cubism combined. He puts thousands of dots of color on the canvas until you begin to see a picture in depth. But just when you think you've got it, he shifts perspective and you see new dimensions in the characters that were unsuspected by narrator and reader alike.

The adjective "painterly" occurs to me in connection with Durrell, as in 'This is a writerly book!' It connects with literature as diverse as Cavafy, Forster, Parachelsus, de Sade, Freud, and traditional Arab folklore, and echoes of Durrell are heard in works by the generations of writers who followed him. Also it is a book for writers and for artists of all stripes, as many of its characters are aspiring, successful, or failed artists.

This is also a study of "love" in all its forms. Of sexual entanglements there are plenty: incest, rape, prostitution, May-December romance, and adultery by the carload... but also loves of place, of friends, of service, of status, of ideals and traditions... and all the frustrations and tragedies that attend these loves.

I strongly recommend the Alexandria Quartet to those who have the vocabulary, patience, and love of elegant language necessary to the appreciation of a literary masterpiece.

Alexandria Quartet

Popular literary pundits tend to present works in their preferred hierarchical order. Thus Ulysses and War and Peace on the highest levels and Tobacco Road on the lowest. Controversy usually follows, one arguing this work should be placed higher than that. As in any ordinal scale, when one goes higher, another goes lower. This baseball team standing method has no meaningful place in the assessment of literature. X is not bad because Y is better and A is not better than B, it is simply different reflecting a different domain of the human experience or psyche.

Now we come to the genre of near-forgotten works that should be read and remembered. With these, a scan of the internet reviews will show that dedicated and deep readers have not forgotten them, yet the general public has no clue who or what work you mean. Lawrence Durrell seems to be one of those writers and his Alexandria Quartet seems to be one of those works. This review, among other reviews floating in cyberspace, attempts to bring him and it to the surface and to illustrate its place in the corpus of non-out-dated works.

What is the Alexandria Quartet? At the first level, it is made up of four novels: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea. These works can be purchased as individual books, but should not be so read. They comprise in reality, Volume I, Volume II, Volume III, Volume IV of the Alexandria Quartet. From beginning to end the setting is Alexandria, Egypt. The time ranges from between the wars to during World War II. Perhaps by this point many readers will opt out having no interest in the place or time. But there is more, much more. Thoreau spoke of his simultaneous love and hate of Emerson, saying both were necessary for true friendship. Durrell carries this further, into the realm of lovers, and in my view, was onto something fundamental. I will not overinflate rhetoric here, but will say that the four volumes provide the deepest, clearest, and most wonderfully written considerations of the human phenomena of love that I think exists.

Ernie Seckinger
November 6, 2008

Very cerebral book that speaks to those that love well written books. It is something that each and every word is chosen carefully in a piece of art.

I read these books many years ago and in the first, Justine, I discovered my favorite poet, Constantine Cavafy. Re-reading Justine, this time I found the characters lame and self-indulgent and Durrell's vocabulary overblown. His writing improved in Mountolive and his characters came to life as they struggled to survive in a complex and shadowy world. Alexandria itself is portrayed accurately as a ragged and beautiful city, connected to three of the world's major religions and a stage for the drama of their conflicts. No question that Durrell appreciates the history and culture of this port city and is willing to shine a light on its frailties as mirrored in the characters of all four novels.

the book was in the condition described and I'm enjoying reading it. Knowing I can trust the description given of used material means I'll use that source again.

The Alexandria Quartet was a very popular book in the sixties. I read it when I was a teenager. After more than forty years I read it again and was disgusted by the snobbish English attitude of the author. I admire the writing technique but the way Durrell talks about "Arabs" when he refers to the Egyptians shows that he had no interest in the people of the country where he lived for so many years. The Arabs never have a name, nor a face. All characters in bis book are either Jewish or European (mostly English).
For me this is not a good book today.