Spirit of place

     Over the last few days I've been reading Deborah Lawrenson's novel Songs of Blue and Gold, and I've taken it slowly to savour it and make the most of it - it's that kind of book. Completely absorbing, beautifully written, psychologically perceptive - that's the broad brushwork of it; the detail is equally fine.
    It is based on the life of Lawrence Durrell, about whom I know a certain amount and several of whose books I've read (most notably The Alexandria Quartet), but it's by no means necessary to be familiar with him to enjoy this. Deborah Lawrenson's character, the poet and writer Julian Adie, was inspired by Durrell's life and work, and her settings are real places in which he lived, but the plot is the writer's own. It concerns Melissa Norden's search for the truth about her mother Elizabeth's involvement with Adie many years earlier on the island of Corfu. Melissa is escaping a turbulent time in her own life, trying to block out the present by researching Elizabeth's history and this hitherto unknown relationship, and as the story moves from Kent to Corfu and rural France, her discoveries unfold to reveal the past and, it seems, a future.
     Julian Adie is compellingly drawn and has all the attraction attributed to Durrell: "The golden aura, the careless manner, his intense interior life, his exuberant insistence on mystery and exploration - it was all a great conjuring trick, one that fascinated her." One of the themes of the book is biography - its challenges and pitfalls, the wrong-turnings based on myth or the straight, hard road of fact and substance, and its use in explaining others' lives with reference to our own, and as such the mix of solid research and informed invention is a highly successful one; it's a very well-balanced book.
     Having read this I want to go back to Durrell himself now, perhaps to read Prospero's Cell his account of life in Corfu, and then to read more by Deborah Lawrenson, so much have I enjoyed my introduction to her.
Meanwhile this excellent novel goes straight onto my books of the year list!