I simply cannot appreciate this book.

It is a prime example of pure form over substance. The substance seems to have been devoured and digested by a peacock, which was then killed, encased in a block of beautifully painted concrete, and buried under a zen garden.

The story is lurking somewhere within the pages. From what I could manage to gather, it might not be a bad one. There are things happening to the characters that perhaps lead to some state of mind progression or presentation. Maybe.

The characters, however, are as blank and formless as Durrell's writing isn't. Any one of them can be interchanged with any other. There is no characterisation whatsoever. I have no idea why Justine is so important and impactful to anyone in this book. And yet she is. So much so that when she disappears, everyone's life is greatly impacted and changes. And nothing in the entirety of this book gives a reason or explanation for it. She just is. She is Justine Impacta McGuffin. And as such, she is the best, most important, most impactful thing in all these characters' lives.

Maybe Balthasar will have a point.

I read the book by thinking "What am I reading right now?" The reason for my thinking like this is not that the text is difficult and hard to understand, but that it doesn't resemble any text I have read before. From the very first sentence, the author's poetic language wraps around the reader.

There is no fixed time in the book, and there are jumps to the past. Although this situation makes reading a bit more difficult, when one focuses on the text, I don't think it detracts from the pleasure of reading at all. I am eagerly waiting to read the other books in the series to see that the truth is not absolute but variable.

I believe that this book offers a unique reading experience that challenges our perception of time and reality. The author's use of language and the structure of the story make it a captivating and thought-provoking read.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading literature that pushes the boundaries and offers a fresh perspective.

I woke up far too soon. Regrettably, I believe that's the issue with this particular work. I feel like a patient undergoing surgery who has received an inadequate dose of anesthesia, or someone who suddenly opens their eyes wide in the middle of a hypnotist's performance. I truly had no intention of making you look bad, and quite frankly, I would prefer it if you could put me back to sleep. But here I am, nevertheless, looking at you.

Durrell gives the impression that he was thrust into the role of overseeing the puppet show before he was truly ready. This is a test product, not something that has been approved by the FDA for sale on the market. There are aspects of it that work and others that don't, and he made the decision to let everyone see his notes on his experiment before it was complete. He throws out sentences as if he is dictating them while drunk, with his legs propped up on his desk, jabbing his finger at some poor secretary who is being kept late to capture her boss' "brilliant ideas" before they vanish. And some of his metaphors and incantations are, indeed, brilliant. He is able to pair the right idea with the right paint color, the right speaker, and send them out one after another until he builds up a really great rhythm that almost lulls me to sleep. But then there is something so tinny, so echoingly bad or false that I wake up laughing in his face.

I have had a great deal of experience with this type of book, books that aim to create lush phantasmagorias of dreams, cultural imaginaries, personal fears, and endless regrets. These books are written as unreliable elegies that attempt to lift all their memories out of their boxes one by one to examine them for as long as possible... and how they become transfixed or transformed in the process. This is about a lost, probably-never-fully-was Alexandria, where scenes are bundles of portentous dialogue and impressionistic descriptions, interspersed with jarring realism and humor that strives for wryness but often comes across as bitterness. The thing about these sorts of books is that they require a lot of preparatory work and an incredibly delicate touch in the telling. Durrell does a reasonably good job of painting the scenery and giving it a smell, a taste, and a feel, at least in the beginning. He also does a perfectly fine job of inserting suitable characters to wander within it - the observant, but unremarkable fish out of water narrator, the glittering Master of the Universe, the Madonna, the Whore, and the grotesques that dance in the background and remind us that we are watching Comedie Humaine, not Tristan and Isolde. We wander through the circles of hell for a while, being shown everyone's punishment, and so far, we are on the right track.

But then he forgets that the tale lies not just in its contents but also in the telling. Somewhere around the halfway point, the story seems to lose momentum and focus and becomes much more about watching the freak show than guiding us through it and making us understand that we are moving towards an endpoint that will tie all the threads together. Durrell becomes overly pleased with his own voice and with using characters as an excuse to explore slightly ridiculous philosophy. It becomes less about an elegy and more about a political judgment, less about a world and more about a pose. The jealous, conflicted love triangle makes a fair amount of sense until it becomes a quadrilateral, at which point the characters start acting things out rather than being things, and then it becomes less of a literary novel and more of a soap opera with tortured metaphors and unnecessary digressions into esoteric religious matters. Without the momentum, it seems to lose the magic as well. In order to make the elegy worthwhile, you have to make us understand why the living are writing it, and Durrell lost the plot for me there. This was probably largely due to my increasing frustration with his writing in the latter half of the novel. The point of this one was in the magic, and without it, there isn't much point in continuing.

I might finish it at another time, but I would like to do so at a point where I might be able to appreciate the intent behind the metaphors and ignore the frustrating digressions. I really did like the first part of this so much. But now is not that time.

To be continued.

I tried to tell myself how stupid this was — a banal story of an adultery which was among the cheapest commonplaces of the city: and how it did not deserve romantic or literary trappings (87).

In a way, that's exactly what this novel is about. However, it is also a profound meditation on human relationships. It delves into the reasons why we form them and why we need them. Moreover, it is beautifully written. This is prose poetry if I've ever seen it. Durrell has a remarkable talent for delivering sometimes elaborate descriptions of locations and mental states. But more often, he provides incisive observations expressed in unusual metaphoric or analogical terms.

The only aspect that irritated me about the book was the way Durrell's prose elevated mundane characters to such unbelievable, dizzying heights of profundity. Of course, all of this is filtered through the narrator, an author trying to record these details and make sense of his own experiences, which must seem profound to him. How else can he bear to be where he ends up at the end of the novel except by retelling those events as grand and profound? If he can't be happy, perhaps he can claim that he learned something. Nevertheless, I'm a little disappointed that some of the main characters, especially the women, are so lifeless. It's paradoxical, perhaps, for women like Justine and Melissa to be so flat and abstract as characters yet so elevated and rich as symbols in the author's mind. So, that flatness may be more a result of the book's narrator than Durrell.

Perhaps another explanation lies in the fact that the story is set in Alexandria, the ancient seat of learning and knowledge — the site of the Great Library of Alexandria. As the author of the manuscript we receive as Justine, the narrator is attempting to understand or know something about Justine. His desire for knowledge of her is described at one point as a "devouring" of her. In this way, Durrell positions Justine as an object (of knowledge), and it is difficult for her to break free from that position. Melissa and Nessim are similarly situated. But in studying people in this way, the narrator does manage to offer very thoughtful insights about relationships.

One of the observations that stuck with me was: "[…] each person can only claim one aspect of our character as part of his knowledge. To everyone we turn a different face of the prism" (119). I understood this like the facets of a gemstone. What we choose to develop and understand about our character for ourselves is a subset of what we project to others. We may be drawn to people who see a facet that we admire or recognize or develop in ourselves. And our other facets attract other people. Similarly, the facets that we see of others attract us to them. We all have many surfaces to support multiple relationships of love, acquaintanceship, disdain, cruelty, and so on. The implication of an observation like this is that there are different facets through which we connect to and know others, some beautiful and kind, some aloof and professional, some cruel or indifferent.

Building those relationships fuels a desire to know, but what we know or can know about others is so limited. And there are things about those close to us that we may not want to know. This also implies that there are different ways of knowing one another, spiritually, bodily, intellectually, and emotionally. Likewise, there are many different ways that we have of knowing, through conversation, observation, and imagination … through others' eyes and through our own. Ultimately, however, what evidence do we have that what we know is true or justified or warranted or permanent?

I may sound a bit negative, but I actually did like the book and plan to read the rest of the quartet. There is a lot to like and think about here.