Part one
Chapter
1 - The Unsupected Isle
Characters:
- Mrs. Durrel
- Mother
- Larry
- Leslie
- Margo
- Roger
- Gerry
Location:
On the island of Corfu
When:
Summer
Gerald's family arrives on the island of
Corfu unceremoniously despite Larry's attempts at "gracious majesty."
Roger drags Mrs. Durrell off the boat and to the nearest lamppost. Roger will
not be induced to leave until he is relieved despite Larry's insistence he be
pulled away claiming the dog has been a problem since the beginning of the
trip. Margo suggests Roger is suffering the same stomach ailment Larry suffered
in Naples.
When Roger is finished, a dishevelled
Mrs. Durrell walks him to the carriage but cannot induce him to get in. The
entire family gets involved pushing and pulling the animal into the cab. The
dog scares the horses that then bolt a few feet tossing everyone into the cab
in a pile.
Personal opinión:
I found very interesting how the writer expresses himself. The book is written with a lot of details.
Personal opinión:
I found very interesting how the writer expresses himself. The book is written with a lot of details.
Chapter
2 - The Strawberry-Pink Villa
Characters:
- Spiro
- Mother
- Christaki
- Larry
- Leslie
- Margo
- Roger
- Gerry
- The plump passant girls
Spiro helps the family to move out into a
strawberry-pink Villa. He paid their hotel bill, organised a cart to carry
their luggage to the villa, drove them out there himself and he is always
helping the family with anything that they need. That’s why he is consider
their guide, philosopher and friend to the family.
After moving out Mother and Spiro went to
the Customs-shed to pick up the luggage. After that, Mother
and her children discuss about them being so selfish because of Mother.
Roger
and Gerry go to look out the spiders, butterflies and a Lilliput that they
found. They also found an erwing nest and check it out every ten minutes.
Gerry
finally find out who the plump passant gils were. They passed the garden every
morning and evening riding their drooping-eared donkeys.
Chapter 3 - The Rose-Beetle Man
Characters:
- Gerry
- Larry
- Mother
- Roger
- Agathi
- Yani
- Rose-Beetle Man
Summary:
What,
where and when happened the incidents:
Gerry
woke up one morning. He went to have breakfast with his family outside in the
garden under the trees. After breakfast he goes out with Roger to discover new
things and he tells that during his journeys he met many people like Agathi, an
old, fat woman over seventy, they sing love songs together; Yani, an old
shepherd who Gerry met while he was sleeping under the cypresses and Yani told
him it was dangerous to do that because they steal your brains, they eat fruit
in Yani’s house. Then there is the Rose-Beetle Man, Gerry met him on a lonely road,
he plays on a shepherd’s pipe, he was thin because of the lack of food, he had
a hat with rose-beetles attached with cotton. He carried bamboo cages with
different things like animals. That day Gerry bought him a little tortoise
which the man had in one of his sacks. He called it Achilles. He loved grapes
as Roger and that is why they constantly fought. But the fruit he loved the
most were strawberries. And he loved human company. One day they left the gate
open and Achilles escaped. When they found him, he was almost dead. When he
died, he was buried under a strawberry plant. Sometime after, Gerry got another
pet, a pigeon which he called Quasimodo. He loved music. One day she lay an egg
and became wild and escaped. Gerry saw the Rose-Beetle Man just once more, from
far.
Chapter
4 - A bushel of learning summary
Characters:
- Gerarld
- Margo
- Larry
- Mother
- Lesie
Animals mentioned:
- Roger
- Quasimodo
- Achilles
Summary:
Mother realized that Gerry needed an
education. Leslie says that Gerry needed to know how to read, shoot or sail,
while Margo leaned more towards dancing. Larry said literature and Mother said
French, mathematics and spelling.
The whole family discussed about this
matter. Mother came to a conclusion, she said that Gerry needed a teacher and
they did, in fact, get a teacher named George who was Larry's old friend.
George had a melancholic voice and a very
sarcastic sense of humour. George taught Gerry natural history geography, math,
French and English. George madehis lessons more didatic, besides Gerry did not
have any books present. While Gerry solved math problems, Goerge danced.
When studying geography, thay used giant
maps that meant something to one who studied. Despite these fun subjects, Gerry
was not very succesful in history, so Geprge explained him history with animals
for a better comprehension for Gerry.
During the lessons, Roger slept.
Quasimodo joined Gerry and George sitting on Gerald's lap. Achilles also
joined. After a certain time, George introduces outdoor lessons on a cliff.
There was a bay under the cliff with still transparent water and it had
fishes.
The pair sometimes picked things that
caught their eye, like shells, hermit or crabs. There were also sea-slugs. They
talked about the war between France and England in sea.
A very fun fact is that Gerry and George
played with sea-slugs, because these creatures ejected water or some kind of
liquid when squishing them. Gerry and his teacher played with thes poor
unfortunate souls like if they were guns, while Roger played with them or just
ran.
Opinion:
This is a very fun chapter to read.
George is a very fun teacher, one that we wish to have, and his methods help
Gerry understand the subject better. They develop a special student-teacher
bond. The last part, where the slug war takes place, was hilarious, the details
and how it was described.
Chapter
5 - A Treasure of Spiders
Characters / Animals:
- Gerald
- Roger
- Yani (shepherd) and his wife, Leonara and Taki (fisherman) were just mentioned
- Yani´s cat
- Theodore
Summary:
At a hot, dreamy afternoon Gerry and his dog Roger went up to climb over
the hills. After a while scaling up, they could see the island covered in light
fog below them with all the grey-green olives, black cypresses and the
multicoloured rocks. Directly below their position there was a beautiful bay
with white sand and they decided go for a bath instead of continuing climbing
up the hill.
After a while they were tired and hungry and had to find a place to eat
before getting dark. Between the options going to Yani, the shepherd, Leonara
or Taki, the fisherman they decided to go to Yani´s house. They went down and
Yani offered them wine and toast. He also showed Gerry a scorpion method that
served for stings by putting it into oil.
It was late when Gerry and Roger left Yani. At the same time Yani found
a very strange nest so he went down to look for George who was together with
his friend, Theodore. Yani described both of them what he has seen and all
together they went up to the nest to see what was in there. All of them saw
very peculiar spiders living in the nest.
Chapter
6 - The sweet spring
Characters:
- Gerry
- Theodore
- Larry
- Mother
- Margo
- Spiro
- The young Turk
- Leslie
- Yani
Summary:
The days of spring are finally beginning.
This leads to the family to be happier, except for Larry. The older brother
gets depressed during the spring, since he believes it is the death of the
Winter. Larry spends the days locked in his room, drinking wine and singing sad
songs.
Since the heat is intense in Korfu, Margo
decides to go swimming in the ocean quite often. While doing that, she met a
Turk, which she kept as a secret. Of course the first one to find out about
that is Spiro, who happened to see Margo and the Turk together. He passes the
news to Mother and tries to make her see the Turk as a bad influence for Margo,
simply because he’s from Turkey. Mother takes it very good and decides that
Margo should invite the Turk over for tea. But when the young man came over to
the Villa, he did nothing but repeat how brave and unafraid of everything he
was. That evening, he invited Margo to the cinema. Mother insists on going with
her, but, when both ladies are back home, she did nothing but regret it. According
to Mother, it was awful and everything went from bad to worse, leading to Margo
never seeing the Turk again. Within the next days, Leslie buys a double-barrel
shot gun and goes out to shoot birds with Gerry. The chapter ends with both
brothers seeing Yani form far away on their way home.
Conversation
1
Character:
- Gerald
- Mother
- Larry
- Margo
- Leslie
Summary:
Now that the family had settled down and
started to enjoy the island, Larry wrote to all his friends and asked them to
come out and stay. The fact that the villa was only just big enough to house
the family apparently had not occurred to him. Larry described his friends as
extremely charming and ordinary people. Mother told Larry that he should let the
Pension Suisse know when they were coming so they could reserve the rooms. The
problem was that Larry had invited them to stay at the villa!
Mother and Larry began to discuss since
they did not have enough space for their visits. Larry thought Margo and Leslie
could sleep on the veranda and Gerald could move into the drawing-room. Those
weren’t good ideas as it was very cold at night. So, Larry came up with the
idea of moving to a bigger villa, so his friends could come. The dilemma was
that Larry had invited eight friends so if they moved into a villa large enough
to house thirteen people, what were they going to do with the extra space when
they were gone? Larry’s answer was to invite more friends!
So, the family moved to an enormous
mansion…
Opinion:
In my opinion it´s ridiculous to rush to
a new villa because some people are coming.