Books: The Carnal Jigsaw

CLEA (287 pp.)—Laurence Durrell—Duffon ($3.95).

In this new novel, the fourth volume of a quartet, Author Durrell continues his absorbed investigation of contemporary Alexandria, the 2,000-year-old Egyptian seaport that he calls the "royal city and the anus mundi." Durrell delightedly wanders Alexandria's dust-tormented streets, blinks in its lemony sunlight, and pokes curiously through its stews, brothels, and hysteric festivals. Keeping him company is a clutch of God-haunted characters who live, love and die with tautly stretched minds.

Here again are Durrell's ravening women: handsome, black-browed Justine, a nymphomaniac with a neurotic need of...