Review by Jen Newby

Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet explodes the flat stereotypical characters that abound in modern fiction. Although Durrell wrote the quartet during the late fifties his writing remains undated. Vibrant characters writhe off the pages, and embed themselves into your mind, closer acquaintances than fictional constructs. You cannot forget Scobie, the decrepit cross-dressing policeman; Justine, the enigmatic ‘dark lady’; or Pursewarden, the narrator’s errant literary rival.

Constantly shifting perspectives on events, Durrell creates an exciting layered effect, akin to John Fowles in The Magus. Traversing the same ‘dust tormented’ Alexandrian streets he retells one story in four entirely different novels. There is something Woolfian about Durrell’s ability to move from character to character, and entirely embody them, yet, for me, he has a sense of humour, perhaps earthiness without vulgarity, and breadth of vision that Woolf cannot quite bring herself to depict. Durrell’s Quartet is so engaging that as the narrator’s initial view of events in Justine (the first novel) unravels in Bathazar, you begin to question how you might see yourself as a hero, yet be someone else’s fool, or villain. Darley, Durrell’s alter-ego watches himself fluctuate from lover, to dupe, to recluse, and back again, and we watch with him, caught in Durrell’s web of revelation and twisting plot. The exotic background of war-time Alexandria, where Durrell himself lived, acts almost as a character: it is mirage-like, ‘half-imagined,’ reforming with emotional events, seductive, dangerous and alive.

The novels chart a story of jealousy, self-discovery, and passion, but they are incredibly complex, full of smaller plots, seemingly random happenings and characters – Scobie’s hilarious canonisation; Cohen’s ignominious death; Narouz’s madness – which add to the richness of Durrell’s fictional world. Overshadowed by his mentor, Henry Miller, Durrell is in many ways the greater writer. Using similar techniques – autobiographical fiction, visceral material, and a concern with sexuality – in his Quartet he forms a more interesting fictional experiment than Miller’s (largely) penis-fixated ramblings. He deserves to be more widely read. Perhaps we could throw out a few modern ‘bestsellers’ to make room for him on our shelves.

The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell (Faber and Faber, £14.99) is out now.

Jen Newby is an aspiring journalist, recently returned from living in China. She has an English degree from Oxford University.