Nunquam Continued

Monsieur fascinates, is full of many interesting possibilities, yet does not quite succeed. Durrell, sadly, does not develop more fully the many curious, inter-linked themes that he interjects along the tortuous way of this novel within a novel. In fact, one often gets the feeling that Durrell himself—­like most of his characters—was never quite sure what shape this novel would take and literally im­provised as he went along.

Durrell’s central concerns remain the same and Monsieur is very much in continuation of Nunquam. Once again he explores the worlds of erotic exper­ience, of reality and illusion with the implied con­clusion that there is no demarcation between the two: ‘By a singular paradox the passages that he knew would be regarded as unreal (‘people don’t behave like that’) would be the truth, and the rest which rang somehow true, the purest fabrication.’ Yet Durrell is merely repeating a well-known cliche though his vehicle for doing so is intriguing.