Word: clea
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...CLEA (287 pp.)-Laurence Durrell-Duffon...
Here again are Durrell's ravening women: handsome, black-browed Justine, a nymphomaniac with a neurotic need of intrigue; large-eyed, blonde Clea, who, when stripped, looks as "naked and slender as an Easter lily"; and blind Liza, still dotty with love for her suicide brother Pursewarden. Here, too, are his strangely ineffectual men: Nessim, the Coptic millionaire, in trouble both with his wife Justine and the British government; Dr. Balthazar, the homosexual cabalist; Mountolive, the stiff-necked British ambassador; and Darley, the Irish schoolteacher, who tries to put together the carnal jigsaw puzzle of his friends...
...single event can be variously interpreted by different participants. In Justine, Purse-warden's suicide is attributed to acedia, or boredom with life; Balthazar suggests that the suicide was caused by his failure as an artist; in Mountolive, the motive becomes purely political; and now in Clea, it seems established that Pursewarden took his life in an ironic expiation of his incestuous love for his blind sister. Durrell's point: "Truth is what most contradicts itself...
...Clea, which opens several years after the events of the first three books, time marches forward again. After selfexile on an Aegean island. Irishman Darley returns to Alexandria, still asking questions, still getting dusty answers. Justine, the great intriguer, has grown older and suffered a stroke: a drooping eyelid gives a leering expression to her rouged and overpowdered face. She climbs again into Darley's bed, and he flees her, shuddering. But Darley must love someone, and he turns to blonde Clea. Her words after they make love are the same ones spoken by Justine in the first volume...
...Messianic impulse, is brutally slain. Faithful to his belief that "truth is what most contradicts itself," Author Durrell fails to be explicit about the murderer. It may be Nessim, Justine, or even agents of King Farouk's lethargic government. Presumably, this cliffhanger conclusion will be solved in Clea, the last volume of the quartet, scheduled for publication next year...