Sicilian Carousel [Paperback]

Lawrence Durrell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 16, 2009

Although Durrell spent much of his life beside the Mediterranean, he wrote relatively little about Italy; it was always somewhere that he was passing through on the way to somewhere else. Sicilian Carousel is his only piece of extended writing on the country and, naturally enough for the islomaniac Durrell, it focuses on one of Italy's islands. Sicilian Carousel came relatively late in Durrell's career, and is based around a slightly fictionalized bus tour of the island.

Product Details

• Paperback: 295 pages
• Publisher: Axios Press (September 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1604190159
• ISBN-13: 978-1604190151
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #576,552 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Durrell Lite, April 5, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Sicilian Carousel (Paperback)

I think of this book as 'Durrell Lite'. While Durrell's language is as magisterial and richly evocative as always, reading his account of a package tour of Sicily is a bit like going to hear Pavarotti sing in a small high school auditorium with poor lighting. There just isn't enough scope for his vast powers of observation within the confines of this brief, hurried tour. Instead of colorful locals, for example, Durrell gives us cranky, mostly English tourists, inconveniently falling ill in cramped hotels. If only he had gone to Sicily on his own, to spend a summer or a year, what a different book this might have been!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Everything But Sicily, September 12, 2006

By 

R. Schultz (Chicago) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sicilian Carousel (Hardcover)

I got this book in preparation for a similar bus tour I was scheduled to take around Sicily. But while Durrell always promised himself he would write a "pocket guide" to Sicily - this isn't it. This book is about almost everything but Sicily.

Oh, it gives some of the atmospherics of the Island. And it conveys a sense of how profoundly Greek the Island is. But beyond that, there isn't much of the modern Sicily here. And there is almost nothing about the place that Durrell cites as having personally attracted him, almost nothing that he recommends to those with a similar temperament. He carried away few unique insights from his junket.

Most of this book is a reminiscence about Durrell's friendship with a deceased woman named "Martine" - and about their days together on other islands, mostly Cyprus. There is a lot of somewhat abstruse reference to Greek mythology, a lot of showy erudition here. But again, where is the living Sicily in all this?

It is interesting to read Durrell's account of his friendship. Although it took place just a few decades ago, it almost seems as if it must have taken place in another time altogether, on another planet. Rarely does a man so take to heart a woman's character and ideas. Rarely does a man quote a woman, as Durrell quotes Martine here - re-reading her letters to him, recalling her every turn of phrase, her interests. So the book is worthwhile on that account, because of the way it holds out hope for real intellectual friendship between a man and a woman.

But I repeat one more time - where is Sicily? If like me, you are looking for a personal guide to that Island, you might do better to just stick with Rick Steves.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A quick tour disguised as a novel or vice versa, February 1, 2001

By 

Stephen O. Murray "Stephen O. Murray" (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sicilian Carousel (Paperback)

In his 1977 account of a bus tour of Sicily, Sicilian Carousel, Lawrence Durrell says "all the characters in this volume are imaginary." In some sense it is a novel about Martine, a friend on Cyprus who lived in Sicily and often urged the narrator to visit Sicily. The narrator is guided by and confirms many of her analyses of places and histories and also portrays an international cast of fellow travelers (a French couple with a child, a Japanese couple, and various English types). What the narrator and Martine write is mostly perspicacious both about Sicily and about traveling. Reading the book is like joining the conversation between Martine and the narrator about Sicily and seems a better book to read after one has some experience of the island to compare to the impressions of the now-dead Durrell and the long-dead Martine.

(The occasional poems are underwhelming, though I like the line "They also die who only sit and wait.")