Justine

Lawrence Durrell

Well, my two-month struggle with the first hundred fifty pages of the first novel of the Alexandria Quartet has left me with one resolution: I will never read the other three (or, probably, any other Durrell).

Don't get me wrong. Durrell writes beautiful prose. The descriptions of Alexandria are lush, detailed, and really give the reader a feel for the city. You can almost feel the heat baking out of the clay as night goes on.

The problem is, aside from Alexandria itself, there's not a single character in the novel worth caring about, not a plotline worth following (for that matter, what little plot there is in the novel appears and disappears at random like a faraway TV signal on an old Zenith black-and-white). There's nothing to do but marvel at the beauty of Alexandria. Which, I guess, is fine for folks who take week-long vacations to a particular tourist spot, and then go stare at that landmark for eight hours a day as it steadfastly refuses to do anything but sit there. Perhaps it's a mark of my lack of attention span, bad breeding, or what have you, but I like there to be at least minimal action in a novel. If I wanted a book where absolutely nothing happens, I'd read Stephen Jay Gould. (zero)