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.

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.