We voted this book into our Cousins’ Book Club this year, and I for one really enjoyed it—though I don’t think either of my kids (13, 14) will finish it.

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Brief Summary of My Family and Other Animals

The book includes the highly detailed (and therefore likely fictionalized) recollections of a young Gerry Durrell and his family who have elected to move to the small Greek island of Corfu in the 1930s. As the title suggests, the many anecdotes in this volume describe both Gerry’s family and the many things this young naturalist discovered during his explorations of the island.

I appreciated the fact that Durrell admits early on that he wrote this as an adult, and reluctantly so. His wife found it humorous, and he shared it with others, and he eventually realized that it could easily be a welcome bit of humorous literature. I wasn’t aware until after I read this book that Durrell followed this with two more books, and that these stories of his life were later made into a movie and now a whole miniseries! I doubt I’ll ever watch them, but the popularity of this series I’d never heard of surprised me.

“My Family”

I’ll be honest that when I first heard about the book, I anticipated that the island they were visiting was deserted—like the island the Robinsons permanently claimed in The Swiss Family Robinson (1812), or the one the Dahls temporarily claimed in Boy: Tales of Childhood (1984).

Instead, Corfu is inhabited by ancient Greek villagers and farmers, retirees and even convicts. It’s definitely a place peopled with all sorts of odd characters—like their good friend Spiro, for example—so it’s no wonder why Durrell was able to keep pumping out memory-based anecdotes. It’s a bit like what Garrison Keillor accomplished with Lake Wobegon, and who’s to tell which one is most based in reality!

But the real stars of book are Durrell’s own kin who join him in the move. Besides his mother, he also introduces his siblings as:

Larry, the eldest, was twenty-three; Leslie was nineteen; Margo eighteen; while I was the youngest, being of the tender and impressionable age of ten. (4)

I can’t begin to expound on their varying personalities—most often displayed in arguments and uproars—but I was personally partial to Larry, whose dry humor often brought a chuckle. Take, for example, this suggestion he gives his mother for how to disinvite an unwanted guest:

‘Write and tell her we’ve got an epidemic of smallpox raging out here, and send her a photograph of Margo’s acne,’ suggested Larry. (180)

The “Other Animals”

While the people-side of the memoir is heavily sociological and provides a great snapshot of life in pre-WWII Greece, the nature side is genuinely naturalistic. In fact, with its mixture of people, culture, and animals, I felt it really fell in line with James Herriot’s books—of which I’ve only reviewed The Lord God Made Them All (1981).

As a bird-watcher and butterfly-lover myself, I’m also an amateur naturalist who eats this kind of literature up. I loved reading books like The Singing Wilderness (1956) and How Animals Talk (1919), and this book follows in their veins, though from a “child’s” perspective.

Throughout the book, ten-year-old Gerry hunts scorpions, spiders, and beetles. He befriends owls and seagulls. He raises pigeons and tortoises. He’s like a little Teddy Roosevelt in his fervor, except he doesn’t kill everything before studying it!

I was honestly shocked at the amount of life Gerry was able to find on this inhabited Greek island, but I guess I shouldn’t have been. I live on an island too, and I’ve found so much life here (something like 10,000 observations at my last count!). And I have a friend proving this to me again—by just focusing on a single park on a smaller island just off our main island, she’s revealed hundreds of species I’ve never even seen!

Biographical Essays

What this book really sparked in me was a craving for more autobiographical anecdotes like this. I’ve mentioned before that Roal Dahl has been the only author I’ve read whose “autobiography” read like a collection of short stories—both in Boy and Going Solo (1986)—and I love him for it. I think more authors should approach telling their stories this way, and it reminds me that, if I ever want to preserve my own life’s story for posterity, this is exactly how I should do it!

I’d also like to encourage my friend to do the same, the friend who recommended this book for our Club. She’s lived on this island for years, raising her kids through homeschool and studying the nature all around her. She’s in the perfect position to preserve for those interested not only her own story but also the story of this place.

From there, I challenge you as well, Dear Reader. What experiences particular to your own time and place can you share with the world? What sociological/naturalist/personal anecdotes could you write that will preserve that plot of historical ground that’s yours and yours alone?

Conclusion

I truly enjoyed this unique little memoir, and I’d recommend it for any readers who love light humor, reading about the forgotten peoples of history, or amateur naturalism.

Do note that the book contains some mild cussing—though I excuse by saying, “Hey, it’s British!”

©2026 E.T.