The Dark Labyrinth

by Lawrence Durrell

This captivating Mediterranean novel was written by Lawrence Durrell immediately after finishing his exquisite vignette about Corfu, Prospero's Cell, and a decade before Justine. The story is set on Crete just after the War, as an odd assortment of English travellers come ashore from a cruise ship to explore the island and in particular to examine a dangerous local labyrinth. They include an extrovert painter, a spiritualist, a Protestant spinster with a fox terrier, an antiquarian peer and minor poet, a soldier with guilty memories of the Cretan resistance, a pretty convalescent and an eccentric married couple.

To some extent the book is a roman à clef and Durrell's characters talk with great reality about their experiences, themselves and a certain psychological unease that has led most of them to embark on their journey. The climax is a disastrous visit to the labyrinth, with its reported minotaur. The novel is a gripping piece of story-telling, full of atmosphere and the vivid first-hand writing about Mediterranean landscape and people of which Durrell was a master.

[ Cefalu (1947; republished as The Dark Labyrinth in 1958) ]

Genres: Fiction, Greece, Literature, Classics, Literary Fiction, Novels, British Literature

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1947

About the author

Lawrence George Durrell was a critically hailed and beloved novelist, poet, humorist, and travel writer best known for The Alexandria Quartet novels, which were ranked by the Modern Library as among the greatest works of English literature in the twentieth century. A passionate and dedicated writer from an early age, Durrell’s prolific career also included the groundbreaking Avignon Quintet, whose first novel, Monsieur (1974), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and whose third novel, Constance (1982), was nominated for the Booker Prize. He also penned the celebrated travel memoir Bitter Lemons of Cyprus (1957), which won the Duff Cooper Prize. Durrell corresponded with author Henry Miller for forty-five years, and Miller influenced much of his early work, including a provocative and controversial novel, The Black Book (1938). Durrell died in France in 1990.

The time Lawrence spent with his family, mother Louisa, siblings Leslie, Margaret Durrell, and Gerald Durrell, on the island of Corfu were the subject of Gerald's memoirs and have been filmed numerous times for TV.

Reviews

[GD · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best book no one's ever heard of. It's really had to find, and I can't understand why, because Lawrence Durrell's a pretty popular author. This was the first book I read by him and still my favorite, about a group of people who get separated from each other exploring these caves in Greece, and what happens to all of them, inside and out. Really creative, and I don't think he ever got this good again.

[Gorkem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tek kelimeyle muazzamdı!

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know that thing where because you read so much of one genre, you keep expecting non-genre books to follow the same conventions?

That.

I know the Durrell family from having read My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell at school, and then reading several more of his memoirs off my own bat. It's quite funny to realise that the moody older brother Gerald remembers turned into, apparently, quite a well-known author.

I think I took this off my parents' bookshelves many years ago and I've never got around to reading it. I have finally done so as part of a concerted effort to get through my to-be-read pile, which I started... last week.

This was published in 1947 (my copy is from 1969). I kind of feel like I need to better understand post-war Britain before making claims about this novel... but actually that's not the case. Certainly I think Durrell is making some pretty specific comments on British society of the time; but he's also making comments about humanity more generally that are still applicable today.

The story: a bunch of random people, some with tenuous connections and other not, come together to go explore a labyrinth on Crete as a day-trip from their Mediterranean cruise. The first chapter is written in the aftermath, so we know right from the start that there's been an accident and some people haven't survived - I was surprised to see this narrative technique in a box written 70 years ago, to be honest, and was quite confused initially (it's one of the aspects I now love about it). The rest of the novel gives some background to most of the characters, and then details their experiences within the labyrinth.

I should stop here and say I really loved this book. Occasionally the style made me impatient - some sentences were a bit too opaque for my tastes, and I couldn't quite figure out whether Durrell is being serious in his misogyny or whether he's being ironic, since I think both options are equally plausible. But this book is staying on my bookshelf, since I can well imagine rereading it (also my mum might be sad if I ditched it).

Durrell himself said the novel was "really an extended morality but written artlessly in the style of a detective story. Guilt, superstition, The Good Life, all appear as ordinary people; a soldier on leave, a medium, an elderly married couple (Trueman), a young unfledged pair, a missionary..." (in a letter to Henry Miller). The variety of characters - yes, many of them tropes - is of course what allows him to explore different attitudes and ideas and problems. The main character, or at least one of two who gets the most airtime, is a mediocre poet-cum-wannabe-critic who has just been drifting for years. Born to some money, never really had the inclination to hold down a job or be properly the starving artist in the garret; not great to his wife; and so on. In contrast, the other character with the most time is Baird, who has come to Crete to try and lay some demons to rest - the difference between the two men is stark. The other single men of the group - the medium mentioned above and an arrogant artist - provide some colour. There are two women: the missionary, who is severe and generally angry and disapproving, and an uneducated young woman trying to better herself. The "elderly" married couple - and it hadn't even occurred to me that their name is Truman! - are really a package deal throughout the novel and may be my favourite part of the whole story. Certainly their eventual story is the most captivating. They are generally looked down upon by the artists and "better bred" members of the group (they won the opportunity to go first-class on the cruise) but there are simply wonderful moments that make them incredibly real. Like someone walking past their room one night and hearing her crying, and him saying "There, Elsie... I know things would have been different if it hadn't died." And then there's no further explanation.

For all its universality, this is a novel of its times. People are still deeply affected by the impact of World War 2. The medium, Fearmax, has had a basically reputable career as such. Notions of class, while beginning to unravel, are still very prominent (and perhaps they are still in Britain but I think it's more pronounced here). Psychotherapy is an intriguing notion and people can't quite figure out whether to view it as science or quackery. That doesn't mean you need to understand 1940s Britain to get the novel; it just means that understanding these people live in a basically recognisable but actually very different world is an important thing to keep in mind. The past: they did things differently. Even in novels.


As to my earlier comment: there is no fantasy element to this story, even though it really felt like there should be, at times.

[Daphna · Rating 3 out of 5]

The main disadvantage of this novel is in its inevitable comparison to the magnificent The Alexandria Quartet published more than 10 years later. The Alexandria Quartet is a deeply layered, complex and intelligent work of art and this novel can’t but pale in comparison. It doesn’t even begin to rise to its magnitude.

All in all it’s a good story with a group of well- developed characters with interesting back stories and I did become engaged with them as their stories lead them all to the Labyrinth. I did however find the dominant presence of the omniscient narrator aggravating as he incessantly, and rather heavy-handedly, pontificates on a variety of psychological, philosophical and spiritual matters.

I should have probably let Lawrence Durell be after reading what is most justifiably considered his magnum opus.

[Lobstergirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Dark Labyrinth is by turns comic, philosophical, eerie, surreal. From the outset we know that a group of English tourists has gone into a labyrinth (caves) in Crete in 1947 and a disaster has happened. It's not clear how many are dead and which ones they are. There may be a minotaur involved. We then go back in time and learn their back stories, arriving at the present. The events in the labyrinth are described. Several of the outcomes are surprising, puzzling even.

I thought as I read, it incorporated elements of two classic works - The Bridge of San Luis Rey (character sketches of a tragedy's victims) and A Passage to India (bad things happening in caves).

[Czarny Pies · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title of this early Lawrence Durrell work makes one fear the worst. The words "Dark Labyrinth" make a reader of the 21st Century think of a Heavy Metal album or a Japanese video game. At the time the novel was released, they probably evoked a "B", Hollywood horror movie. Unfortunately, the novel is as bad as the title suggests.
In addition to his lurid approach several GR members have also criticized Durrell for lifting his plot from Thornton Wilder's "Bridge of San Luis Rey" which is a fable about a group of unrelated individuals who perish simultaneously when the centuries old Incan cord bridge that they are walking on collapses. In the Dark Labyrinth, a group of British tourists on a cruise through the Greek archipelago are trapped in a cave by a freak accident. The similarities between the plot lines of the two novels are too numerous to be coincidental. Despite the outrage of my fellow GR members, I do not feel that is fair to criticize Durrell for borrowing from Eliot. Great writers as T.S. Eliot famously said do not imitate; they steal directly.
What disappointed me most about the "Dark Labyrinth" was the lack of Greek colour. Durrell who lived for many years in Greece was very knowledgeable the country and knew the language very well being amongst other things the translator of Seferis and Cavafy. However, in the "Dark Labyrinth" the reader finds only the clichés about Greek antiquity that prevailed in the Anglo-Saxon countries at the time of Durrell's writing. The novel is about a group of stereotypic English characters who confront their demons in the Minotaur's cave. The Greeks of the sort that Durrell knew are entirely absent.
I must acknowledge like several other GR reviewers that after a dreadful start, the novel considerably redeems itself in the second half. The way in which the characters meet their private Minotaurs and resolve their issues is consistently clever. For the committed Durrell fan, this novel indeed has some very good moments.

[Bert Hirsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve often wondered why I collect certain books through the years. Multiple moves entailed weaning away a dozen here, a dozen there, but still my library with a healthy contingent of unread books has been a constant companion. Just the other day I found, hidden away, a small dusty paperback, a 1978 Penguin edition of Lawrence Durrell’s The Dark Labyrinth.

So many years ago, I had thoroughly enjoyed his Alexandria Quartet- a series of romances written in poetic language set in Egypt. Now, a fan of Jorge Luis Borges and his frequent use of the labyrinth as a metaphor for the mysteries of life, I took it up.

A delightful choice, The Dark Labyrinth is a post WW II novel about a group of British tourists cruising the Greek Isles who, on a stop on the island of Crete, decide to take a tour of a series of caves formed as a labyrinth.

An odd mix who are loosely connected through their independent relationship with a British analyst who encourages them to explore life: Baird- whose wife “displays Bohemian behavior” to which he would sulk and grow a mustache and the cruise evoking “the first fugitive feelings of happiness being alone”, Campion- a free living painter “who would do anything to break the monotony of this life of changes”, Graecen- a classicist poet, Fearmax- a psychic with a deck of Tarot cards, the Trumans- a retired couple, and 2 single women-a younger librarian and an older religious kvetch.

Durrell creates a suspense once the group experiences an accident while touring the labyrinth. What befalls them varies and in some ways the novel transforms itself into part Robinson Crusoe/The Lost Horizon- Mrs. Truman “feeling as if she lost her way in her own dream”; there was no more need for sleep nor for death.

“Something inside me seemed to change…perhaps I only imagined it…in some way we had become allied to the forces of Nature instead of against them…the whole of western civilization was based on the Will; and that led always to action and destruction…yet there is something inside us, an element of repose which you could develop, and alter your life completely.”

In conclusion this was a delightful escapade of just 256 pages by an author I was happy to revisit after so many years.

In an end note Durrell says the tale was inspired by a travelogue, The Islands of the Aegean, written in 1875 by one Rev. Henry Fanshawe Tozer. For some odd reason I was also reminded of another great book, The Magus by John Fowles.

[Maritina Mela · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lol, bye bye Felicia!

DNF at 38%

If you've been following me for the last year or so, you probably know that I have a hard time DNFing books, and I am definitely not enjoying doing that, but I'm afraid I'm gonna have to DNF The Dark Labyrinth.

I know this was the book that won the 1st poll where I asked my followers to choose my January TBR, but guys this is torturous.

I am not having any fun reading this.
It's dull, the characters are blant and could easily be replaced with carbon cut out figures, the story and the whole "describing unimportant things and events" goes on forever, yet nothing happens, and even tho I read the first 100 pages, I still cannot tell you what the story is about.
It's not even "good" enough to get a rant review, like Σεμέλη or Τα Δόντια του Δράκου did! don't get confused, both of the books I mentioned are horrible, please do yourself a favor and avoid them entirely.

Here's hoping that the rest of the books I will be reading in 2019 won't end up giving me headaches.

'Til next time, take care!

[Silvia Feldi · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book was very boring at the beginning but I was stubborn enough to move thorugh it and as the action unfolds, the story gets really exciting, even a bit surreal. The final chapter about the labyrinth and its possible paths is almost cathartic, a brilliant metaphor about our inner life with all the hopes, dreams and fears and really sticks in your brain for days. Overall, great storyteller who will make you see Greece (and even life!) with different eyes.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Durrell writes an intriguing story set during WWII as some tourists get trapped on the isle of Crete. Their labyrinth becomes the plot of the story. Enjoyable read.

[Sahiden35 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oldukça güçlü ruhsal analizler içeren bir roman okudum. Savaş, kilise, din, psikoterapi, deniz yolculuğu, kara yolculuğu, içsel yolculuk ve daha birçok teması ile etkileyiciydi. Zeytin ağaçları ve Ege denizinin insanı nasıl iyileştirdiği de içinde yazılı. Dicky Graecen ve Hogarth'ın diyaloglarını dönüp bir kez daha okudum. Bir kaç ay sonra yine okurum o ikiliyi.

[Marijan Šiško · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like the style, it's rich and litterate. The beginning is at times diluted and a bit boring, but the rest of the book is engaging and thoughtful.

[Leela]

Not sure what to rate this. I picked it up in a charity shop because of the author. Never read anything by him but I expected a different genre for this story. I liked the style a lot, both the style of writing and the structure of the narrative, although now finished I feel mostly confused.
It's more of a reflection on society and life than anything else, as told through the characters' experiences - but the reflections were at times lengthy and seemingly pseudophilosophical. Was the author being ironic or honest? ...does it matter?

[Antonis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Το ακριβές θα ήταν να έβαζα 3.5 / 5, αλλά μισά δεν υπάρχουν. Κι όμως έτσι νιώθω τελειώνοντας το μικρό αυτό βιβλιαράκι των 250 περίπου σελίδων μικρού σχήματος. Μισή δουλειά...
Τα πρώτα κεφάλαια αναλώνονται στην περιγραφή των χαρακτήρων (παρελθόν, δουλειά, προσωπικά) μιας ετερόκλητης ομάδας ανθρώπων που βρέθηκαν σε ένα πλοίο προς την Αίγυπτο. Άγγλοι της μεσαίας τάξης που ταξιδεύουν προς τη λάγνα Ανατολή προσπαθώντας να βρουν και να ξεφύγουν ταυτόχρονα από τον εαυτό τους. Είμαστε στα πρώτα μεταπολεμικά χρόνια και όλα είναι ακόμη ρευστά. Το πολιτικό τοπίο έχει φαινομενικά ηρεμήσει μετά το διαμοιρασμό του κόσμου σε σφαίρες επιρροής, αλλά ο άνθρωπος δεν έχει καταφέρει να απαντήσει κανένα από τα βασικά ερωτήματα της ύπαρξης : το γιατί και το πως της Ζωής.
Η παρέα εισέρχεται με τουριστικό ενδιαφέρον σε ένα σύμπλεγμα σπηλιών στην ορεινή Κρήτη και μια κατολίσθηση τους εγκλωβίζει εντός. Από εδώ ξεκινά το φλερτ με το "μαγικό ρεαλισμό". Τι από όσα μας παρουσιάζονται είναι αλήθεια και τι φαντασία, υπερρεαλισμός, μεταίχμιο ζωής και θανάτου; Το κεφαλαίο Τhe roof of the World είναι το πιο χαρακτηριστικό. Δεν θέλω να συνεχίσω γιατί θα γεμίσει spoilers η ανάρτηση και αυτό είναι κάτι που αποφεύγω.
Οι χαρακτήρες είναι διάφανοι και ασθενικοί. Η πλοκή έχει ελλείψεις. Θα έλεγα ότι αξίζει να αφιερώσει κανείς χρόνο στο έργο αυτό, μόνο αν είναι fan του L. Durrell. Διαβάστε το Αλεξανδρινό Κουαρτέτο - είναι σκάλες ανώτερο.

[Νικος Μπουτης · Rating 2 out of 5]

Κατι αναμεσα σε Μαν και >Λι Φερμορ, ανευρο και υποτονικο, οχι και πολλα πραγματα.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recently re-read My Family and Other Animals, authored by Lawrence Durrell's younger brother Gerald. It's a very funny account of the family's stay in Corfu in the 1930's when Gerald was 10 and Lawrence was in his early 20's. 'Larry' is pronounced a writer and spends much of his time clattering on his typewriter, and I became curious about what he had published. It turns out he was a highly-celebrated author. I ordered The Dark Labyrinth because it was set in Greece; it was published when he was about 35 years old, just after the end of WWII. I really loved this book.

It started out a bit uneven for me, and I found Chapter 1, which is very short, to be rather confusing. I even re-read it which didn't help clear matters up much. However, continuing on turned out to be the best policy as the rhythm of the book fell into place. The story centres on a group of English nationals who disembark from a ship to take a day trip to a labyrinth on the island of Corfu, despite being warned by the British government that the labyrinth is unstable and unsafe. While they are inside there is a cave-in which kills their guide and separates the party (mostly into groups of 2). We then go back in time to pick up the party members' histories in greater or lesser detail, return to the visit to the labyrinth and each person's experience, and discover the outcome for each person following the cave-in.

While the book is beautifully written, its strength lies in the ideas it explores, particularly ideas of creativity and art, and the dark shadow that death casts over the individuals in the story. This is unpacked in various ways, including war experiences, the diagnosis of a terminal condition, and the interactions of a medium with people 'on the other side.'

While misogynistic attitudes are well on display, for example descriptions of women as 'fillies' etc., an attitude of women as disposable companions, and a sense of the noble need to improve and protect women, the final chapters redeem these viewpoints; it is only two women who appear to have the ability to achieve a higher plane of living and communion with nature (and I won't say more or it would be a spoiler of the first order).

This book achieves much in its relatively few pages and I am still thinking over the themes it explores.

[Andreea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Finally, I finished!!! Maybe it was me, but this is one of the hardest to finish... I had no desire to read it...I find characters, although described in detail and some deeply analyzed, false, lifeless, like puppets moving around in the hand of various puppet masters. The end was somehow saving the book, but...really why do you need 200 pages for 50 beautiful ones? Mythology? There is only a tint of it...and not even really used, or analyzed, just some pretext, as if the action is in Greece there must be some mythological being wandering around...

[Gregory · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating read with profound insights into the shortcomings of academia and archaeology. The opening scene (as I recall from reading 20 years ago- yet still seems vivid) is of an old archaeologist playing chess while casually explaining how he falsified a dig in order to lift his career and expose other archaeologists as frauds. The irony drips off the page as the retiring scholar explains how everyone will now rewrite the history of civilization because of his fraud... to prove his point that they are posturing for careers instead of truths. Captivating.

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

A classic tale from the master. On one level a physical exploration of a labyrinth on the Island of Crete, on another a metaphysical exploration of the labyrinth of the human soul, that Durrell conducts vis his characters. A totally gripping read that is impossible to put down. The fate of those who escape the rock fall in the labyrinth come as a complete surprise!

[Yn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read this book multiple times. It's one of my favorite of all times. Every character in this novel has finds their own version of salvation, only to find it's also their own hell. Some survive, some don't.

"Be specific. Be very specific." --The Safety of Objects

[Kris McCracken · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very dull reminder that, even in the late-1940s, cruise ships can never lead to anything good.

Give it a miss.

[David]

This is the third novel that I’ve read in recent weeks that, on the surface, presents itself as typical of a genre but underneath is a post-war (0r post-wars) examination of how the human mind works, how it faces fears, memories, and changes, and how it adjusts—or doesn’t—under trying circumstances. Whether crime/spy thriller, horror story, or narrative of exploration & unexpected crisis, each of these novels (the other two were A Gun For Sale and Benighted ) is a (relatively) modernist study of how the mind works, what it makes of where it finds itself, and how one can, IF one can, know that one’s conclusions and consequent decisions/actions make some sort of sense. In this book, Durrell takes the reader on the journey into the interior, throws an ‘insurmountable’ obstacle into the works, and then observes how various subgroups among his dramatis personae deal with the obstacle. Some survive and some don’t. As with the earlier novels, this one is talky, with many passages in which characters try to voice their philosophies to each other, or quietly to themselves, and much consideration of what it all means. Acceptable, but not entirely satisfying. Maybe it will seem much more so if re-read after the current pandemic isolation. Here are two quotations which seem to me to summarize the whole subgenre: “their work constitutes, therefore, as does that of the medium, deliberate evidence of states of being not communicable in linguistic terms” and “‘What is reality?’ said Fearmax aloud, and recognized it as one of those questions whose import had troubled him for as long as he could remember.… was this whole place merely a mad exteriorization of his inner confusion [?]”

[Maggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this to read after watching the PBS show The Durrells of Corfu. I had no idea that the Durrells were real people until I did a search for the show on Amazon and saw so many books written by Lawrence and Gerald.

It was a little hard to follow at times, but kept my interest to finally find out what happened to all those who had taken the trip to see The Labyrinth and the Minotaur.

[Abra Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a difficult book. The writing style is indicative of it's time and there is an atmosphere that definitely tells me that it's from the mid 20th Century. Durrell was recommended to me by someone I trust so I was determined to finish. The first part of the book is difficult to get into. It seemed disjointed with long complex sentences and many words throughout the book that I had to look up. The second half became smoother and in the end, I did enjoy it. I probably need to re-read it again to fully appreciate it. But, it is not an easy book so you have to really want to read it!

[Željko Obrenović · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zanimljiv pogled na mit o Minotauru, od tvorca Aleksandrijskog kvarteta.

[Cazz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not for me too much waffle and very little story.

[Roger · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like I'm circling the work of Lawrence Durrell, slowly spiralling into the core - The Alexandria Quartet which I have been meaning to read ever since I received a copy as a gift many years ago. For some reason I have never been able to get started on it - the time never seemed right. When the TV series The Durrells came out I went on a little second-hand bookshop binge of Durrellania, and read the first two books in Gerald's Corfu Trilogy, and the two books (Tunc and Nunquam) which form Lawrence's Revolt of Aphrodite, written after The Alexandria Quartet.

And now to the novel under review, written before the Quartet, Durrell's fourth published novel and the first to be written after the War. It is a philosophical novel that is full of allusion. I' m not sure I understand everything that Durrell intended me to, but I enjoyed reading it very much (certainly more than Tunc or Nunquam).

In short, the book centres around a group of characters that find themselves together in an underground labyrinth in Crete, where they have gone to look at ancient statues and inscriptions. They have arrived there on the ship Europa, which they all boarded for differing reasons. The novel gives us the background story of nearly all the characters, who are all dealing with unresolved issues in their lives.

Baird cannot shake the guilt he feels over killing a German soldier in cold blood while he was serving on Crete, Graecen is dealing with a terminal diagnosis and looking back on what he has achieved in his life, Fearmax is dealing with the loss of his gift, while Campion is trying to escape life altogether, or at least the life that is thrust upon us by convention and habit.

When these and the other characters (the Trumans, Miss Dale and Miss Dombey) arrive in Crete, their individual fates are set in motion. Baird leaves the party to deal with his personal demons by re-burying the body of the German he shot: he has no need to go into the Labyrinth as he had been there before during the War, when he led a band of Partisans who were based there. The others are all led in by a local guide.

When a rockfall occurs, it both cuts off those in the Labyrinth from the outside world (except Graecen, who finds himself on the other side of the blocked tunnel and quickly escapes to the surface) and from the each other. We then follow their individual journeys to death or rescue. Each journey is particular to the person, and in some way reflects their character and life.

Miss Dombey, the religious bigot, denies her faith and quickly commits suicide. Campion and Miss Dale are faced with an unenviable choice on a rock ledge - a hundred-foot jump into the ocean is the only way they can save themselves - later in the book we hear that Miss Dale survives, but we find out incidentally that Campion can't swim. Fearmax is drawn further and further into the Labyrinth, drawn by the thought of the spirit with which he once communed, only to be in some way devoured by the Labyrinth (by the Minotaur?).

The Trumans exit the Labyrinth to the "roof of the world", a small enclosed valley between mountain-peaks with no way out once the Labyrinth was closed. There they met Ruth Adams, who has created a life up there, initially with others who had since left or died, but now alone. The valley is a kind of paradise, where the Trumans begin to slow down and reconnect with their inner selves guided by Adams, who has reached some sort of enlightenment through "repose" ("I had never been still enough before. Here I got as still as a needle").

There is a lot going on in this book. At base it's a fairly gripping adventure story (the story of the Labyrinth, the backstories of Baird's war in Crete and Fearmax's dabblings in the occult are all gripping in their own way). It is also a commentary on post-war life, and on (middle-class) mores and values. Durrell uses the characters to map out differing views: Graecen who accepts how things are and looks with bemusement at those that don't; he has a flirtation with Miss Dale, but realises that it would be absurd for an aristocrat to marry a Cockney. Campion the artist, rails against conformity and society in general, and hats that he has to participate in it. Miss Dombey, who has closed herself off from the World via her religious mania, and Fearmax, who's early life closed him off from the World and led him to live in the world of spirits.

Durrell, as did many young novelists of his time, packs a lot of social commentary into the thoughts, words, and actions of his characters, generally scathing of received wisdom and current fashions of thought. The figure of the psychiatrist Hogarth, university friend of Graecen and clinician to both Baird and Fearmax, looms early in the novel as some sort of eminence grise over the lives of the characters (it is on his suggestion that those three characters board the Europa) and has very little time for the 'normal' in relationships - when Graecen tells him he is dying, instead of the sympathy he wants (and needs) from Hogarth, he gets short shrift. Likewise Baird gets told in no uncertain terms to deal with his problem in a practical way, rather than merely talk about it.

Through Baird and Campion's conversations we get a thorough critique of the War and mankind's obsession to dominate each other and the World. This is juxtaposed with Abbot John - a Partisan leader during the War but now a monk who is, in Durrell's eyes, a quintessential Greek - half mystic and half man of action, who is happy merely to provide for his flock and living a happy life.

Which brings us to the mystery of this book - what does the Labyrinth mean to these people, why has it happened to them and what are they telling us the reader about life? It's clear that Durrell is not writing merely to tell a thrilling tale.

There is certainly a moral tone in the work, and indeed an obvious moral reckoning for some of the characters: Miss Dombey's lack of belief revealing itself at the critical moment, and Campion's disgust at life put to the test by his predicament. There is also a philosophical point being made... that one doesn't have to engage with ' modern life' to be engaged with life, and that seeking alternatives to Christianity such as Eastern Religions or the occult don't help unless an individual makes an internal commitment to change.

Durrell apparently described this book to his good friend Henry Miller as "a rotten book but with some small lucid moments and one or two good lines." I think he was selling himself a little short. It's by no means a great novel, but it is a good one.

Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 3 out of 5]

“There was nothing in the deepest and most vital sense, to be said; no summing-up, no judgement to be passed upon what had begun to travel through them – time in its pure state – as water will run noiselessly through fingers trailed from a boat.”

That is nice. There is no denying. In fact, the book is superbly written. Unfortunately, as it is sometimes the case, I did not really get it. We have a couple of people going to Crete. At the end of the Labyrinth, they find themselves on the “Roof of the World”. Where they meet a woman who needs no sleep. That is when it gets interesting. A bit late.

But if I did not get much of the novel, the blame is on me.

“Why”, said the bookseller one day, “are you reading so much? You do not seem to enjoy it. It’s like you are studying for an exam. Books are for pleasure. you know.” The remark struck him. A pleasure! Did he get any pleasure, in the strict meaning of the term from them. Did he, if it came to that, understand exactly what the word meant? What was pleasure?”

[Isabel (kittiwake) · Rating 4 out of 5]

When a group of first class passengers on a cruise disembark at Crete for a guided tour of a labyrinthine cave system at Cefalu, they are trapped by a rock-fall, with only Lord Graecan being on the right side of the rocks to make his way back out and raise the alarm. The back stories of the passengers (many of whom already knew each other) and how each of them reacts when facing death in the labyrinth, make for a fascinating story.

There are sub-plots about the mysterious Axelos, who lives in a house at Cefalu, the ancient relics recently found in the labyrinth, and Captain Baird who is haunted by a man he killed in occupied Crete during World War II, enhance the atmosphere of the wild and mountainous island that permeates the book, and the story unfolds in a strange mix of realism, fantasy, and fakery.

[Mathilda · Rating 5 out of 5]

A captivating Mediterranean novel,full of atmosphere and the vivid first-hand experience is the description about the landscape and people of which Durrell was a master. It is set on Crete just after WW2, an odd assortment of English travellers come ashore from a cruise ship to explore the island and in particular to examine a dangerous local labyrinth. They include a lot of eccentric people each on his or her own mission. To some extent the book is half mystery/suspense romantic and a psychological story, the characters tells you about their experiences, themselves and a certain psychological unease that has led most of them to embark on their journey. The climax is a disastrous visit to the labyrinth, with its reported minotaur, a gripping piece of story-telling.