Lawrence Durrell, Some Thoughts

I’m currently working through one of the most pleasurable reading experiences of recent times. (This year has been a good year of reading for me.) Durrell is a phenomenal talent. He makes you pine for an age you never knew, as much for the quality of writing if nothing else. His ability to bring character and place alive are unchallenged. A thoroughly de-constructive narrative, too, the kind of thing to destroy the formula of a novel and rebuild it, brick by brick. And he often delivers some punching sentences.

• ‘A city becomes a world when one loves one of it’s inhabitants.’
• ‘There are only three things to be done with a woman. You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature.’
• ‘A woman’s best love letters are always written to the man she is betraying.’

I wish I’d jotted more down as I’d gone through. I shall put down a more thoughtful review—if it’s possible with such a text—in the coming weeks.