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The most recent Penguin cover before the miniseries tie-in.<\/p><\/div> A happy new life for a longtime favorite book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe book is the hilarious memoir of an English family\u00a0making a go (and often a hash) of it on the island of Corfu\u00a0in the 1930s. My Family and Other Animals<\/em> by Gerald Durrell (brother of Lawrence Durrell, who in this memoir is a sulky young adult aspiring writer who takes himself too seriously and has not yet written the Alexandria Quartet).<\/em>\u00a0Gerald Durrell grew up to be a pioneer of the kinds of zoo meant to rehabilitate injured and endangered animals and reintroduce them to the wild. In this memoir, young Gerry is a 10-year-old budding naturalist, obsessed with the treasure trove of animals, birds, and insects on the island. His teenage siblings are a quirky, independent, accident-prone lot; it’s a crazy, funny family led by\u00a0a good-natured, exasperated mum. Durrell’s account of their many misadventures \u2014as well-intentioned as they are disastrous\u2014 is a delight to read.
\n![](\"https:\/\/images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51pMeTE3KLL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg\")
Now that PBS’s Masterpiece has created a fantastic miniseries out of the book, I hope\u00a0legions of new readers will discover it, along with Birds, Beasts, and Relatives<\/em> (the sequel), and Fauna and Family<\/em> (the third in the Corfu trilogy).
\nThis seems like a\u00a0perfect time for Penguin to resurrect another\u00a0charming, very funny\u00a0book Durrell wrote,\u00a0Rosy Is My Relative<\/em>, about a hapless young man’s attempts to sneak\u00a0an elephant through the yards and gardens of English neighborhoods. I haven’t read this in years, but it made me laugh out loud, and, checked for\u00a0some of the cultural faux pas of the time period, might have a new life right now.
\nUsually, I’m a total curmudgeon about books turned into movies and TV shows, but the English really do it well. Even if you haven’t read the book, the series is\u00a0wonderful to watch, and I hope will lead you to the written original, which is beautifully written.
\nP.S. On a minor and neurotic note, I’m also happy that I can pronounce Durrell the right way (DURR-el) without the anxiety of being incorrectly corrected. For years I’ve struggled with this; a colleague back in my NYC days knew the family, and told me the correct pronunciation, but every American I know pronounces the name,\u00a0Dur-RELL. Now this can happily become a thing of the past, the way my pronunciation of A Man Called Ove<\/em> changed radically (to OO-vuh) upon listening to the audiobook.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"