The Avignon Quintet
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List Price:
$31.00
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$21.03
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Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: Faber and Faber
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780571225552
ISBN: 0571225551
Label: Faber and Faber
Manufacturer: Faber and Faber
Number Of Pages: 1376
Publication Date: 2004-11-18
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Studio: Faber and Faber
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Editorial Reviews:
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An omnibus edition of the five novels published by Durrell in a kaleidoscopic sequence between 1974 and 1985. The books are set mainly in Avignon and the ancient kingdom of Provence, though significant episodes in the quintet are set in the Egyptian desert, Venice, Paris, Vienna and Geneva.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Not The Alexandria Quartet
Comment: I hold The Alexandria Quartet to be perhaps the greatest novel in English literature. The less well known Avignon Quintet, I guessed, was never likely quite to measure up; unfortunately this expectation proved right.
Of course the Quintet is, in many parts, a beautiful book, or collection of books. Durrell takes the reader to Egypt again, and his depiction of the south of France, where he lived, makes for a vivid and appealing painting of a country: Provence, that has now changed beyond recognition. His speculations on the gnostics and the cat-and-mouse game around the templars' mystery are interesting and had the potential to guide the kind of multi-layered story developed in `Alexandria'.
But the five-tome piece has none of the sober coherence of Durrell's earlier work. The novellas, and too often the characters, are related by a writer's trick, not through the plot itself. They are also marred, in `Livia', by an attempt at a historical rendering that falls flat by purposely ignoring chronology. And Durrell rambles; of course he is witty and brilliant, but no one can always be brilliant over asides that take perhaps half of this 1,300 page block.
The Quintet remains readable and in many parts absorbing, but it is for true devotees of the author. I wonder if Durrell was tainted by the French `nouvelle vague', which seems to have influenced the book's construction and characterisation, or whether he was simply aiming too high in trying to exceed his own, unmatchable masterpiece.
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