Scan barcode
A review by leic01
The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell
5.0
I received The Alexandria Quartet as a Christmas gift from a dear person, and I was in the mood for reading series. Although I haven’t had much time for reading, this books had a hypnotic quality to them that sucked me in deep in the Durrell’s world, city of Alexandria. There are so many great quotes from this books that I not going to quote anything, because I can’t decide on one of just a few. The writing was magical, poetic, mystical, deep, talking about core and the essence of humans, often saying thing that are ignored and not talked about. It was painfully honest and written in original style that got me lost in abyss of human sexuality, subconscious places and seen and unseen realms of relationships. You can perceive city of Alexandria as hell and as whole earth and characters are not defined and fixed, their faces constantly change thought out the course of narrative, and through them you can see struggles, flaws and dark places of each and every one of us. Books take you on a different stream of consciousness than your own, and if you are willing to dig deep enough they are taking you on a journey of discovery of things that you never had the courage to unravel about yourself. This is almost like a manifest of philosophy of introspection.
What fascinated me the most is constant change in perspective that really highlighted the subjective outlook of one person, overall relativity of the truth and complexity of human character. The protagonists seem renewed over and over again, and were deeply layered, often going in the unexpected directions, not afraid to live as they want and take risks, even at the cost of being misunderstood or hated by other people. Durrell had the courage to explore most of the taboo themes of society and moral wrongs, while not be subjective or judgemental, and not injecting his own moral standings. He brings the reader in the state were he doesn’t feel like he can, will or even want to judge any of characters behaviour, even when they’re engaging in adultery, incest, suicide and other ‘sins’ condemned by society and religion. He perfectly showed the deepness of decadence of human spirit and civilization, in the same time not giving it too much of importance in the great scheme of one’s life story and history of humanity, enlightening that the deep reasons for one’s actions are far more significant that the action itself, and behind one’s moral flaws lies the story worth telling and understanding, unravelling it’s layers, time and times again, from changing perspectives. There is so little that we know about ourselves and others, and Durrell perfectly pointed the lavishness of his characters despite their brokenness.
What fascinated me the most is constant change in perspective that really highlighted the subjective outlook of one person, overall relativity of the truth and complexity of human character. The protagonists seem renewed over and over again, and were deeply layered, often going in the unexpected directions, not afraid to live as they want and take risks, even at the cost of being misunderstood or hated by other people. Durrell had the courage to explore most of the taboo themes of society and moral wrongs, while not be subjective or judgemental, and not injecting his own moral standings. He brings the reader in the state were he doesn’t feel like he can, will or even want to judge any of characters behaviour, even when they’re engaging in adultery, incest, suicide and other ‘sins’ condemned by society and religion. He perfectly showed the deepness of decadence of human spirit and civilization, in the same time not giving it too much of importance in the great scheme of one’s life story and history of humanity, enlightening that the deep reasons for one’s actions are far more significant that the action itself, and behind one’s moral flaws lies the story worth telling and understanding, unravelling it’s layers, time and times again, from changing perspectives. There is so little that we know about ourselves and others, and Durrell perfectly pointed the lavishness of his characters despite their brokenness.