eight months later... the return of the Alexandria Quartet!

[sub_divided]

I decided to finish Clea (final book in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet) instead of Anathem. Hard to discuss this series without giving away key plot points but I will try.

Justine: See previous post.

Comments

[sub_divided]

Further thoughts. To Darley, Pursewarden's suicide is inexplicable. Justine thought he died for her. Mountolive thought he died for him - or rather, that he took his own life because he'd compromised their diplomatic friendship. Liza thought he died for her. Structure of the series suggests that Liza is right, because her view comes last. Or were all three right? You can die for more than one reason. It never made sense for Pursewarden to kill himself over his diplomatic position, since that wasn't where his true self lay. Justine's been trivialized by the last book so I suppose it's not her either. But somehow Liza's theory also doesn't seem right...maybe it's only because that relationship is so strange yet runs so deep, it's difficult to get a grip on. (You notice Durell doesn't even try to write his letters to her.)

Still think Justine liked him because he belittled her. The thing with Da Capo - where he told her she'd probably enjoyed her rape and possibly even invited it - just confirmed her in her lifelong low opinion of herself, I think, so that she could embrace her own sense of herself instead of vainly struggling to replace it with a foreign version invented by other people. But that's just a hunch.

Still think Melissa was a Pale Thin Girl. Still apologize for the reference.

There was something about Avaril's relationship with Semira... but I'll have to look it up again, I don't remember.

[worldserpent]

Hmm... maybe I lack skepticism, but it didn't really bother me as much, perhaps because well, it seems the most plausible reason why someone might kill themselves. Of course in other respects, my worldview might lead me to believe that most people kill themselves because of mental illness or inherent personality. (Or what is 'right' in the context of an invented fiction?)

[sub_divided]

This was Alexandria between the two world wars, though! The other characters were shocked, but their thoughts didn't immediately turn to mental illness. They assumed he'd been involved in something and it had gone wrong. (As, indeed, David Mountolive found it had. I actually thought that his explanation was the most likely one, in general - it just wasn't likely in light of Pursewarden's specific character.)

I don't really think it's a "problem". I can accept ambiguity in art, honest! Just trying to find something to talk about. The suicide is one of only a few major events repeated in all four novels - and it's the only one, I think, which has a different explanation in every novel.

[worldserpent]

Well, certainly it is a different time, place, milieu and worldview, but I guess I was just speaking from the perspective of the reader, not from the perspective of the other characters. I really will reread one day, really!

Yeah, perhaps there is no answer, or only the one you like the best.