It looks like I'm the only Goodreads member who didn't like this book. It may well be the masterpiece that everyone says it is, but it wasn't saying anything to me and it was doing that in thousands upon thousands of words. ( )

"There are only two ways out of Avignon, the way up and the way down, and they are both the same."

A very low 3 stars. Think basement level. For charitable purposes only.

Durrell's earlier Alexandria Quartet forms several peaks of the mountain range that towers through the country of my literary journey. Scaling them was an experience I shall never forget, and they will be destinations I return to often.

His Avignon Quintet, conversely, is a supreme example of the master craftsman in his dotage: heady with ideas, fascinated by both form and feature, deliciously iconoclastic 'til the end, but struggling with meaning and how to convey it, too. Freudians, if such still exist, will find much in it, and so will diehard acolytes of late modernism. Otherwise, unless you're - like me - helplessly in love with Durrell, stay away. And if you are, prepare to shift from passionate love to the kind of love reserved for ageing, slightly senile relatives. On a rough day, much must be forgiven. On a good day, what glories await us.

Or perhaps, to be less generous, I'll quote the books themselves: "The drunkard's word list is sometimes the sage's also".

My individual reviews of the books , as posted on Goodreads during my year of Avignon:
Monsieur, or the Prince of Darkness
Livia, or Buried Alive
Constance, or Solitary Practices
Sebastian, or Ruling Passions
Quinx, or the Ripper's Tale ( )

If you read "The Alexandria Quartet" - and expect something similar : forget it.
Much more mysticism here, less story. We are taken to Avignon (and Provence) Egypt, Venice and other places, like we were dreaming.
Obsession with death is throughout the book. I am not sure I like this book, but only halfway through it.
Sometimes it is hard to understand it exactly, what Durrell means to say. (English is not my native tongue) - I will come back when I finished.
If anyone (who reads my comment) and read the book, I would be happy to listen to other's opinion. ( )

Lawrence Durrell is not an easy author to read. His prose is long, fabulous, filled with wandering soliloquies and journeys into the human heart, mind, spirit which at first can seem completely lacking in intention and purpose, and mere descriptive play and fascination with the written word.

He writes on a number of levels and performs immense spatial-temporal tricks with both setting and characters so that at times it is difficult to understand not just where one is located in one's reading of the novel (taken as a group of five) but if one actually exists within it. Durrell speaks to those who can hear, and you may find yourself wondering whether you are a character he has written into the prose, living as one of the protagonists on simply another plane of his imagination.

( )

so long and so vacuous ( )