Book review: Reflections on a Marine Venus

Or, what I did on my holidays, by Laurence Durrell. Sort of. I'm being unkind for effect, which I probably should not be. But quoting Goodreads, In his hugely popular Prospero's Cell, Lawrence Durrell brought Corfu to life, attracting tens of thousands of visitors to the island. With Reflections on a Marine Venus, he turns to Rhodes: ranging over its past and present, touching with wit and insights on the history and myth which the landscape embodies...  which I interpret as the previous book did well, there's clearly a market for this stuff, can you do another island book please?

And so he has dutifully written up his time on Rhodes, post WWII. There's the stuff he actually did, though it seems rather thin for several years worth (perhaps he was busy with his assigned job, and it wasn't quite the holiday I'm claiming), a few stories of excursions, bits of potted history or myth to pad it out, and a culminating peasant festival.

This is from 1953; it may be his second book, and pre-dates the Alexandria Quartet; which, for all my quibbling, I may well now read.

What saves it, of course, is that he is a well-bred cultured chap who writes well. You can take this book anywhere. But, somehow, to me at least, he fails to really convey the joy of the island and instead it is a bit laboured; the effort shows. Perhaps it is indeed a bit dutiful.