THE AYE-AYE AND I/MENAGERIE MANOR.

Purchased from The Book People, two books from Gerald Durrell. The first perfect for the What's In A Name ? 20015 challenge: An Animal In The Title category, the second, my first book read as part of the 2015 Take Control Of Your TBR Pile challenge.



THE AYE-AYE AND I.

AMAZON.CO.UK BLURB: In the gloom it came along the branches towards me, its round, hypnotic eyes blazing, its spoon-like ears turning to and fro independently like radars dishes, its white whiskers twitching and moving like sensors; its black hands, with their thin, attenuated fingers .... tapping delicately on the branches as it moved along, like those of a pianist playing a complicated piece of Chopin .... Read more by clicking on book title

FIRST SENTENCE {Chapter One: The Vanishing Lake}: I once described Madagascar as looking like a badly presented omelette, lying in the Indian Ocean off Africa's eastern 'flank', from which it was wrenched millions of years ago.

MEMORABLE MOMENT {Page 64}: They stagger to and fro like scaly Sumo wrestlers, the dust kicked up into little clouds around them, while the subject of their adoration gazes at their passionate endeavours, showing about as much excitement and enthusiasm as a plum pudding.

MY THOUGHTS: In search of the elusive Aye-Aye in what was to be the last of his adventures. Given that as well as the various animals as is typical of his books we also get to know something about the people, flora and fauna of wherever it is he finds himself The Aye-Aye And I can possibly best be described as a travelogue come conservation book.

A fun and yet bitter-sweet read. Though no longer the boy of books like My Family And Other Animals still as enthusiastic  as ever, whilst quintessentially a 'Gerald Durrell' book we find the author quite frail (first published in 1992, sadly the author died some three years later) and without his usual vigour

MENAGERIE MANOR. 

AMAZON.CO.UK BLURB: Most children at the tender age of six are generally full of the most impractical schemes for becoming policemen, firemen or engine drivers when they grow up ... I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was going to have a zoo of my own .... Read more by clicking on book title


FIRST SENTENCE {Chapter One: Menagerie Manor}: It is one thing to visit a zoo as an ordinary member of the public but quite another to own a zoo and live in the middle of it: this at times can be a mixed blessing.

MEMORABLE MOMENT {Page 57}: .... for after all, the last thing you expect to find wandering about a respectful parish is an infuriated porcupine pursued by a highly embarrassed man in night attire.

MY THOUGHTS: First published in 1964 so a much earlier book than The Aye-Aye And I. Unlike many of his previous books which chronicled his adventures 'collecting' animals Menagerie Manor deals with his Jersey zoo and its occupants. 

Overturning the stereotype of a zoo as a place of captivity in which animals are kept in appalling conditions, a zoo ahead of its time. Whilst for me this doesn't begin to compare with his earliest books it is still full of a wit and a wonderful attention to detail, made even better by the use of pen and ink illustrations, that readers of Durrell's books have come to expect.