The Black Book

The Black Book is a novel by Lawrence Durrell, published in 1938 by the Obelisk Press. Plot Now living on a Greek island, Lawrence Lucifer (not named until halfway through the novel) recounts his formative year in the Regina Hotel in England. The disjointed and dreamlike narrative expands on the theme of dying English culture. Overwhelmed by the rush of details and ideas, Lawrence is unable to embark upon a plan of action to improve society or even himself. His flights of imagination employ mythic and literary motifs of birth, death, drowning, crucifixion, with copulation and frank sexual descriptions chief among these. Furthermore, the story’s chronology is intentionally disrupted through ambiguous tense—the “gnomic aorist” is referenced—and “magical” facts. These surrealistic asides are woven into the episodic encounters with the other characters in Lawrence’s life: residents of the Regina and the colleagues and students at the school where he works. They include Tarquin, an undiscovered writer who struggles with his own sexual identity. The Peruvian cartographer Lobo attempts to overcome his Catholic inhibitions to form relationships with numerous women, including Miss Smith, an African woman whom Lawrence helps to read Chaucer; Lawrence finds her exotic speech and manners meaningful to counteract the stiff coolness of English manners. Chamberlain disdains the “desire” that Lawrence and Tarquin often debate, opting instead for carnal experience with his own wife, Dinah. Morgan is a Welsh veteran of the Great War, a custodian in the hotel’s boiler room with practicable working-class insights. Two other characters are key to Lawrence’s story. One is the unnamed woman (often referred to simply in the second person) whom Lawrence addresses, often when driving in the countryside at night (sometimes in a car borrowed from “Durrell”). The other is the novel’s secondary narrator, the writer Herbert “Death” Gregory. Gregory resided in the hotel before Lawrence’s arrival, and Lawrence consults and quotes Gregory’s diary (written in green ink) at length. At times, the two writers’ conclusions and reactions resemble each other in spirit and theme, enhancing the novel’s enigmatic stream of consciousness.