Love in the Time of Insurrection: Mountolive

Book three of Lawrence Durrell’s four part series is Mountolive, the British ambassador to Egypt around the time of the Second World War. His is a political perspective of the events occurring in Alexandria, only referring to the previous books’ main characters, namely Justine and her husband Nessim and her lover Darley, as their lives underlie the upheaval in their country and neighboring Mediterranean states.

Mountolive early in his diplomatic career was the lover of Nessim’s mother who when he was reassigned took on the task of mentoring him in absentia through years of lengthy correspondence. Upon his return to head the embassy, she refuses to meet him using the excuse of getting old and having been scarred by the ravages of pox. Mountolive does nonetheless encounter Nessim and Justine repeatedly in the swirl of his social and stately obligations.

Pursewarden, whom Balthazar in book two depicted as Justine’s real lover, is the flash character to advance this new storyline given his work at the embassy. He advises Mountolive that the War Office’s exposure of Nessim as a provocateur, adding the Zionist cause, is false. The story unfolds to belie his defense and another explanation of why Justine stays married to Nessim and why she used Darley, et al, is put forth. (This is like watching a serialized TV drama: here we are in season three with the explanation of why she escapes to Palestine and yet another explanation as to why Pursewarden left Darley money.)

Love and passion are again used as vehicles to convey (1) a greater love, love of motherland; (2) as nostalgia and longing that either deteriorates over time to something unrecognizable or is completely displaced; and (3) as is best forgotten or sublimated through duty, tradition or art.

I will complete the cycle with Clea, the woman whose name Nessim’s brother screams out on his death bed. Yet I feel like I’m on a scavenger hunt, still looking for the piece that will bring these novels together into one overarching focus. I want something greater than the sum of its parts for my efforts, something that goes beyond the clever device of relativism in narration.