Mr Durrell's narrative [in Livia] is never impeded by qualms about verisimilitude.

Nor is it arranged into much shape. There are a few hieratic gestures intended to suggest that profoundly meaningful patterns are being unrolled. Durrell is writing about Blanford who is writing about Sutcliffe who is writing about…. And dark, devilish Livia is set against fair, wholesome Constance—her sister who goes to Vienna, not Munich; admires Freud, not Hitler; and, when war breaks out, heads for the Red Cross, not the Iron one. But these tired symbolic stand-bys fail to hold the story-line, which goes lurching round baroquely kinky tableaux like a drunk adrift in a Fellini film-set. Following its incoherent progress soon gets wearying. (p. 591)

Peter Kemp, in The Listener (© British Broadcasting Corp. 1978; reprinted by permission of Peter Kemp), November 2, 1978.