Mountolive is book 3 in Lawrence Durrell‘s Alexandria Quartet and it took on quite a different perspective from Justine (my review here) and Balthazar (my review here). This novel is from the viewpoint of Mountolive, a young English politician sent to a post in Alexandria.
I found Mountolive’s story to be the most interesting and certainly the most political. It puts the true actions and happenings of the first two novels of the Alexandrian Quartet into sharp view. The reader finally begins to piece together everyone’s stories and what is happening among the people of Alexandria. Here we find that Nessim was not truly angry with Darley (the narrator in Justine), but trying to further his political place in society through exploiting Darley’s love for Justine (Nessim’s wife) in order to gain information through Darley’s other romantic ventures.
Everything seems to be pulling into place in this novel and I am thrilled to see what else is explained in further detail in Clea, the final novel in the Alexandrian Quartet.
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