I thought I would give these, or at least one, another go. They are quite difficult and I think I enjoyed it much more 2nd time round. The plot is set among a big group of very ethnically diverse characters in Alexandria just before (I assume WW2) the unnamed narrator, a teacher, fucks Mellissa, a nightclub dancer/whore, but is in love with (and also fucks) Justine, a glamorous Jewish girl, married to a wealthy banker Nessim.
Justine’s past is so complex that all her relationships are pretty messy. Nessim is aware of her involvement with the narrator but appears to tolerate it. There is a lot of involvement with the other members of a bit of a cultural elite – Balthazar, a gay intellectual, Clea, a gay painter who is/was previously in love with Justine, a British novelist called Pursewarden who kills himself, and a delightful old queen called Scobie.
By the end, Justine has left Alexandria to live in a kibbutz in Palestine, Mellissa is dead having born a child to Nessim and the narrator has left for a Greek Island with Nessim’s child where he writes the narrative.
Alexandria is a bit like a very sexually liberated Bloomsbury (partly because the culture is sexually liberated). Read it in a (hot sunny) day and really enjoyed it and this summary doesn’t really do it justice.
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