Justine by Lawrence Durrell

I realized then the truth about all love: that it is an absolute which takes all or forfeits all. The other feelings, compassion, tenderness and so on, exist only on thte periphery and belong to the constructions of society and habit. But she herself--austere and merciless Aphrodite--is a pagan. It is not our brains or instincts which she picks--but our very bones.

An unnamed Irish writer begins an affair with Justine, a beautiful and enigmatic Jewish woman who is the wife of Nessim, a wealthy Copt. The pair betray not only Nessim, who is the narrator's friend, but the narrator's lover Melissa, a Greek dancer who suffers from tuberculosis. These four live in Alexandria of the 1930's, a cultural and political crossroads where nationalities, classes, and even sexualities mix freely. Alexandria is--ugh--almost a character in Durrell's novel, the first in what's now known as the Alexandria Quartet, and Durrell's depiction of the city mirrors the depiction of the affair: cloistered, full of shadows and secret places, a city of cryptic and hidden urges.

Justine, too, is cryptic, prone to saying things like, "Who invented the human heart, I wonder? Tell me, and then show me the place where he was hanged." OK, Justine! Many times, the narrator and others suggest that human personality is an outgrowth of environment, and that Justine therefore is, in her sensuality and mysteriousness, a kind of purest expression of Alexandria's character. (It's no accident that, in the postscript, after--spoiler--Justine has gone away to work on a kibbutz in Israel that she grows stout and unattractive.) The narrator, Justine, and Nessim are all members of a secret group that studies the Kabbalah (did you know the word "cabal" comes from "Kabbalah?") and their investigation into the mysteries of the sacred realm echoes both their secretive inner personal lives and the political scheming that, we come to understand, goes on in Alexandria.

The prose in Justine is remarkable. It struck me, in fact, as the prototype for a style that a lot of writers have attempted and failed: intricate and sensual, perhaps even downright sexy, one which reflects the inner intensity of the doomed love affair. I found the plot, like Justine's aphorism, a little cryptic. The narrator explains that he will report events as their impact revealed himself to him, rather than chronologically, whatever that means. It didn't make me want to read the other novels exactly, but I know that at least two of them cover the exact same time period from the point of view of minor characters, and I wonder if reading them would give me a finer appreciation for Justine, whose nature felt sort of elusive in the end.