Fillets of Plaice

MUCH BETTER WRITER THAN I THOUGHT AND NOT NEARLY AS ARROGANT AS HIS BROTHER

Fillets of Plaice is a delightful memoir by Gerald Durrell consisting of five tales from various times of his life. The first is from his childhood on Corfu concerning a birthday celebration for his mother that, like everything else his family did, goes a bit wrong with unpredictable results. The next piece takes place shortly after Durrell and his family returned to London from Corfu. The author got a job working in a pet shop and met some interesting and very memorable people as a consequence. In the next story, Gerald Durrell has grown up and is collecting animals in East Africa. The story takes place when the British has a colonial empire in Africa and the Foreign Service was running the affairs of the natives. The story is concerted with a Foreign Service Office named Martin who is expecting a visit from his superior and is desperate to create a good impression so he can be promoted to a higher (and better) position. In an earlier visit made by his superior, Martin had an embarrassing situation and had been sent to the Devil's Island of postings in Africa and he is desperate to avoid any problems this time. The final two stories are later in time but how soon after Gerald Durrell left East Africa is not mentioned. In the fourth story Mr. Durrell is front and center as his doctor puts him is a rest home as he is at the point of exhaustion. The story centers around a medical problem Mr. Durrell is having - his nose keeps bleeding. The final story is about a woman to whom Mr. Durrell is attracted and repelled. Her name is Ursula and by his account she is very beautiful but also extremely maddening. She drops many malapropisms and has a character that is disruptive in the extreme. If you have ever been to a concert or movie where someone talks in a normal voice, you will have an idea what Ursula is like. Gerald Durrell is a great story teller and fleshes out his characters and situations with concise and direct language. He is perhaps at his most amusing in the birthday party story where he picks up from his earlier books about his childhood in Corfu. I think it would be best two read My Family and Other Animals (and Birds, Beasts and Relative, if you like) prior to this book so a clear idea of the people in the story is reached. Fillets of Plaice is the kind of book that you will recommend to your relatives and friends to read for the sheer pleasure of the humor and Mr. Durrell's excellent writing.

Well, I may have mangled the quote for this review's title but I am right about the rating of this book. This was such a good book that I actually felt a bit sad after turning the last page! Many of the encounters in this book of short stories shares the same wit, keen observation, and gentle spirit of My Family and Other Animals . . .then there are a few surprises. There are two chapters recalling incidents that must have been decidedly unpleasant and yet he managed to make them uproariously funny! I'd like to say more but it wouldn't be fair to go into too much detail.

When his literary brother Lawerence Durrell (the Alexandra Quartet) compiled a book of stray writings he brought them together under the title "Spirit of Place" as they revolved around the mediterranean spirit. When the irrereverent younger brother Gerald decided to trawl his notes for a new book to fund his zoo in Jersey he jokingly suggested to Lawerence that he could call it "Fillets of Plaice", being a low caste version of his brothers book. The name stuck and this book contains some wonderful and evocative stories. Best of all I think are the two horror stories at the end. I never realised Gerald had such a dark side.