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A review by ionm
The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell
challenging
emotional
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
Lawrence Durrell is a master wordsmith, capable of making literary music with his ornate and lofty sentences. His most celebrated achievement is the series of four novels titled "The Alexandria Quartet". Each of the books is a layer of a puzzle that can be only understood when reading the whole series, thus making any assessment of individual instalments a futile act. Criticising the complete work in its turn exposes the preferences of the reader.
"The Alexandria Quartet" opens up with "Justine". Its eponymous character is the lover of the fictional novelist narrating the novel. Their love affair set in 1930s Alexandria is an open secret that provides a platform to explore the colonial society running the city and a mechanism to meet a varied set of individuals intimately. We get plunged into a puzzle that seems to offer no narrative direction nor any emotional or intellectual motive. The events and the characters are interwoven into a literary web that resembles more of an exercise in style rather than genuine connection.
When we reach "Balthasar", we start to learn of Durrell's attempt at dealing with relativity in literature. Upon reading the fictional manuscript of "Justine", Balthasar, the homosexual doctor in Alexandria, provides his alternate views on the characters and events to Darley, the previously unnamed author. Filled with an abundance of aphorisms and a language too similar to that of the previous narrator, this attempt, albeit commendable, leads to further accentuate the heavy reliance on style over genuine literary concerns.
The third novel, "Mountolive", named after the British ambassador stationed in Alexandria, and narrated fully in the third person, is Durrell's own vision of composing literature. Perhaps, as the only instalment that can live independently of the series, the work focuses more in trying to understand the complex political life in Egypt in the interbellum than on the personal intrigues between Darley, Justine, her husband Nessim, the prostitute bearing his child Melissa who is also Darley's other lover, Balthasar and his male conquests, and many others. The move towards the political provides a spectrum of rational engagement, but ultimately Durrell is a romantic author, and the matters of the heart soon come to overshadow the plot. Mountolive's own love affair with Nessim's mother and Nessim's brother's unrequited obsession with an artist named Clea seem to expand on the sexual diversity of the previous two novels.
By the time we reach "Clea", we are more impatient to finish the series than give much interest to the plethora of characters and their broken passions. The novel forces couplings that add little to the overall narrative, moreover contradicting yet again the facts exposed previously.
For all of its linguistic brilliance, in its nearly 900 pages, "The Alexandria Quartet" is a meandering mess. The praise generated from the stylistic attempt at meta-narrative is sadly lacking any philosophical or emotional consistency. If Durrell made a satire on the state of literature and its development at the time of writing, then the constant musings have little conceptual integrity. If this should be read as an exploration of sex in the modern world, especially given the numerous references to Marquis de Sade, then the completist variation of all types sexual relations expose more of a concern with science rather than literature.
This series is undoubtedly unique in its structure and it has much to be admired in terms of themes. Its failure lies ultimately in its unnecessary verboseness and uninteresting characters. The puzzle is nothing but an open secret for which we lose interest whatsoever. Fiction becomes as trivial as reality, thus defeating the very nature of art. If this is an anti-novel, then as interesting a concept this may appear, it does little to incentivise one's love for literature.
"The Alexandria Quartet" opens up with "Justine". Its eponymous character is the lover of the fictional novelist narrating the novel. Their love affair set in 1930s Alexandria is an open secret that provides a platform to explore the colonial society running the city and a mechanism to meet a varied set of individuals intimately. We get plunged into a puzzle that seems to offer no narrative direction nor any emotional or intellectual motive. The events and the characters are interwoven into a literary web that resembles more of an exercise in style rather than genuine connection.
When we reach "Balthasar", we start to learn of Durrell's attempt at dealing with relativity in literature. Upon reading the fictional manuscript of "Justine", Balthasar, the homosexual doctor in Alexandria, provides his alternate views on the characters and events to Darley, the previously unnamed author. Filled with an abundance of aphorisms and a language too similar to that of the previous narrator, this attempt, albeit commendable, leads to further accentuate the heavy reliance on style over genuine literary concerns.
The third novel, "Mountolive", named after the British ambassador stationed in Alexandria, and narrated fully in the third person, is Durrell's own vision of composing literature. Perhaps, as the only instalment that can live independently of the series, the work focuses more in trying to understand the complex political life in Egypt in the interbellum than on the personal intrigues between Darley, Justine, her husband Nessim, the prostitute bearing his child Melissa who is also Darley's other lover, Balthasar and his male conquests, and many others. The move towards the political provides a spectrum of rational engagement, but ultimately Durrell is a romantic author, and the matters of the heart soon come to overshadow the plot. Mountolive's own love affair with Nessim's mother and Nessim's brother's unrequited obsession with an artist named Clea seem to expand on the sexual diversity of the previous two novels.
By the time we reach "Clea", we are more impatient to finish the series than give much interest to the plethora of characters and their broken passions. The novel forces couplings that add little to the overall narrative, moreover contradicting yet again the facts exposed previously.
For all of its linguistic brilliance, in its nearly 900 pages, "The Alexandria Quartet" is a meandering mess. The praise generated from the stylistic attempt at meta-narrative is sadly lacking any philosophical or emotional consistency. If Durrell made a satire on the state of literature and its development at the time of writing, then the constant musings have little conceptual integrity. If this should be read as an exploration of sex in the modern world, especially given the numerous references to Marquis de Sade, then the completist variation of all types sexual relations expose more of a concern with science rather than literature.
This series is undoubtedly unique in its structure and it has much to be admired in terms of themes. Its failure lies ultimately in its unnecessary verboseness and uninteresting characters. The puzzle is nothing but an open secret for which we lose interest whatsoever. Fiction becomes as trivial as reality, thus defeating the very nature of art. If this is an anti-novel, then as interesting a concept this may appear, it does little to incentivise one's love for literature.