"There were many Livias, some whom I love, and will love until my dying day; others fell off me and dried up like dead leeches."

At this point, I'm almost giving up on long reviews. If you're reading Livia, you've probably already read Durrell's more famous quartet, and you made it through Monsieur, so you're most likely a convert. Yet it would be no fun for me if I couldn't waffle. So, let me waffle.

Monsieur, or the Prince of Darkness ended with the revelation that all of its characters were but confections drawn from the mind of Aubrey Blanford. Livia, or Buried Alive makes good on that revelation by exposing us to the real-life figures who inspired that novel (not, of course, "real" in the sense that we are - as they are still fictional - but that will surely be a matter for the next book). As Blanford and Sutcliffe discuss at one point - crossing the boundaries of reality - "Monsieur would provide simply a cluster of themes to be worked in the others." (Delightfully, we also learn that the single word titles are Blanford's preference; the alternate titles are Sutcliffe's!)

Here, Blanford's mind is cast back to the eerie, unsettled summer of 1939-1940, the Phoney War when for many people there was no chance this could become another Great War, nor - before the advent of mass media - that the evils of Nazism would be quite so dark. Blanford calls this time "a world in awkward transition", and it certainly seems to have many similarities to the 2018 in which I am writing. During his time in Tu Duc (remembered decades later), Blanford falls in love with Livia, while Constance finds her own love in Sam, and the couples - along with the ladies' brother Hilary - encounter the strange world of Lord Galen and his search for the Holy Grail.

As expected, some of the best writing is in Durrell's vivid set pieces, here most often conjured up in characters walking through Avignon and surrounds, especially by night. The fourth chapter, Summer Sunlight, is especially winning with Blanford's remembered love of Livia now turned mournful with her thrall to Nazism now made evident by time. Meanwhile, the novel is far less complex than Monsieur as we spend much of our time interacting with Galen and his broad circle in what amounts to little more than an extended vignette. (Sutcliffe calls Blanford's writings "pornocratic-whimsical" and I think that's a reasonable description of Durrell here!) The sequence in which Prince Hassad remembers wooing Princess Fawzia by taking her to one of the lookouts where Turner painted sunsets, is fantastic.

(I pause momentarily to comment on both Durrell's Freudianism, which is less powerful here but nevertheless makes the commentary on Livia's queer nature a bit unpleasant (even though Blanford has some less than positive things to say about psychology, including call it a "hedgehog"), and his occasional bouts of pure racism - although at the same time, this is Blanford or another narrator speaking, so I can't really jump to any conclusions about a fictional character being written by a man old enough to be my great-grandfather. Nor shall I.)

At one point, Constance surmises that "the great Blanford" might be "simply the fiction of one of his fictions", and occasionally the narrative voice does suggest that someone else is writing this. An unknown narrator? Durrell himself? Another - more real - Blanford conjuring up these versions of himself? Just how many layers are there? I am not sure what layers lie further into the Quintet but this was a most satisfying book in its style, and that ominous atmosphere that gradually descends over Provence as the characters realise that WWII really is upon them. "The whole world was breaking up under them like some raft", and the fact that we know how much the war changed our world provides every line with a neat dose of irony.

And yet Livia herself is primarily an absence in the text - a lacuna, if you will. Rather like Justine in Alexandria, it feels as if Blanford is searching for her not just physically, but psychologically. How could he have fallen for this proto-Fascist (my mind inherently flies to Jerry Seinfeld: "She's a Nazi, George! A Nazi!")? Would things have been different if he could have had Constance? Were their lives defined by war beyond any hope of hope? Whether Livia will be truly important to the outcome is unknown, much as whether Blanford is really real, and whether there really is a grove of olive trees at Avignon that conceals the Templar's secrets. (At one point, Blanford/Durrell references the mysterious labyrinth-cum-quarry at Gortyn, which was considered in the 19th century to be the inspiration of the famed maze of the Minotaur. It was well out of fashion to think so by 1940, and even when this book was published, but 21st century investigators are becoming intrigued by it again.)

But all of this is so much chatter. I do not think Livia stands alone as a great book. It is too unmoored, too old-fashioned (even for Durrell), too deliberately murky, and - in the final chapter at the Prince's pornographic "spree" - a little too [a:Rocky Flintstone|14583899|Rocky Flintstone|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1466500470p2/14583899.jpg]. Yet it is still a luscious read, and hopefully will take on much more weight as I continue the Quintet. Even though I yearn to better understand Constance and Livia, who remain at a frustrating distance while we are bloated with the doings of straight men, this book contains many "moments of silk", to quote the Prince - Prince Hassad, that is, I don't assume he is actually any relation to the previous book's eponymous Prince of Darkness.

In closing, my mind lingers in Avignon. It is unsettling to be nostalgic for a world I've never known, but the poignancy of what happened after 1939 does sometimes make me yearn for that allegedly simpler time. Somehow my imagination of the past brings together today's advanced morals and secular views on equality with the freedom that came from having no mobile phone, no television set, and no jumbo jets. Perhaps this is why I yearn for those carefree days at Tu Duc, even though Durrell imbues every moment with a sense of loss. Or perhaps it is because in his characters' diffuse points of view and, for the most part, their unwillingness to be annoyingly certain about anything that make me admire him as a writer. Certainty in characters tends to indicate either certainty in the author or a failed attempt at character. Durrell has neither of those flaws. And perhaps it is because I have read too much [a:Barbara W. Tuchman|137261|Barbara W. Tuchman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1229046503p2/137261.jpg] and know that certainty in men has been at the heart of so many historical follies. From 2018, 1939 seems like only yesterday.

"The real Empire was in the primacy of human imagination and that must always outlast the other kinds, or so he believed." ( )

could not finish

"Well, squinting round the curves of futurity I saw something like a quincunx of novels set out in a good classical order. Five Q novels written in a highly elliptical quincunxial style invented for the occasion. Though only dependent on one another as echoes might be, they would not be laid end to end in serial order, like dominoes - but simply belong to the same blood group, five panels from which your creaky old Monsieur would provide simply a cluster of themes to be reworked in the others. Get busy, Robin!"

Having 'killed off' Sutcliffe at the end of the previous book, Blanford spends much of the second book in the series discussing his life and relationships with the imaginary Sutcliffe. In the quotation above, they are discussing the series of novels which they (and Lawrence Durrell himself) intend to write. Each of the five books has two titles, the first of which e.g. "Monsieur" and "Livia" is Blanford's, while the second e.g. "The Prince of Darkness" and "Buried Alive" is Sutcliffe's.

Obsessed with his betrayal and desertion by his wife Livia, it becomes clear that the characters and situations in Blanford's novels are based on his own life. Sutcliffe and Toby are aspects of Blanford himself, while Sylvie and Sutcliff'es wife Pia are both combinations of Livia and Constance, and Trash (Pia's lesbian lover, a black academic from the American south) is based on a black prostitute from Martinique who was Livia's lover. Banquo is based on Lord Galen, and Banquo's daughter Sabine is based on Livia and on Galen's vanished daughter. Apart from those based on himself, the origins of Sutcliffe's male characters aren't so clear, but Piers may be based on Hilary (Livia and Constance's brother). I'm not sure about Bruce is based on, but possibly Sam, Constance's husband,since Sutcliffe seems to resent and dislike him for no apparent reason.

While "Monsieur" seemed like a stand-alone novel, I found "Livia", which is set in the run-up to World War II, much more of a mish-mash of threads and characters that don't really gel. The gnosticism that runs through the first book is hardly mentioned, and although Lord Galen and his employee Quatrefages are studying the Templars, it is not as historians but as treasure-seekers, trying to track down the lost treasure of the Templars.

I have visited the Pont du Gard, when on holiday near Uzès, so I was able to visualise the countryside around it, but I didn't really enjoy much else about this book. I'm not sure whether I want to read the rest of the series, so I'll leave it a while and see if they grow on me. ( )