Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

I have been complaining lately about not reading as many books as I’d like to and quietly thinking that I have the worst luck with the quality of the books that I do manage to read (more ‘so, so’ ones than the wonderful ones). But then I read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and everything just got better. It is because of books like this one that I love reading because it makes me realize that one has to dig deep, long and hard to find true gems and once they are found to appreciate them better.

Max de Winter, the owner of magnificent Manderley estate, comes to Monte Carlo to recover after the death of his wife, Rebecca. While there, he meets a young girl, barely an adult, who is a mousy little thing working as a maid-in-training for a know-it-all, nosy Mrs. Van Hopper. Suddenly, a strange relationship develops between Max and the girl. They spend together enough time for her to fall in love with Mr. de Winter and his sudden marriage proposal to her ends up to be a shock to everyone around including the girl. She agrees (what else could she do, it’s her dream come true) and after a few months of honeymoon, Max and new Mrs. de Winter arrive at Manderley. From pretty much the first day, Mrs. de Winter realizes that she would never be treated as the rightful wife of Maxim de Winter by the people who live in Manderley because this honor will always belong to mysterious, beautiful and very much dead Rebecca. And so what was supposed to be a dream life turns into a nightmare for the unsophisticated and timid second lady of the estate.

There wasn’t a single thing about Rebecca that I could criticize. Du Maurier had this wonderful ability to pull the reader into the gloomy, mysterious atmosphere of Rebecca right from the start. I didn’t so much read about this new to me world (a thing most readers look for when starting a book) as really experience it. The descriptive passages of nature and Manderley’s surroundings are beautiful and some observations on what may seem mundane, truly extraordinary. Here are excerpts on roses and rhododendrons (flowers that are common, albeit beautiful) that made me see them in a new light.

A rose was one of the few flowers, he said, that looked better picked than growing. A bowl of roses in a drawing-room had a depth of colour and scent they had not possessed in the open. There was something rather blowsy about roses in full bloom, something shallow and raucous, like women with untidy hair. In the house they became mysterious and subtle.(p.33)

We were amongst the rhododendrons. There was something bewildering, even shocking about the suddenness of their discovery. The woods had not prepared me for them. They startled me with their crimson faces, massed one upon the other in incredible profusion, showing no leaf, no twig, nothing but the slaughterous red (underline mine, I just love this phrase), luscious and fantastic, unlike any rhododendron I had seen before. (p.65)

The peculiar thing you’ll notice when reading Rebecca is that the second Mrs. de Winter is never called by her first name. As I turned pages, it became quite obvious why. The way she acts is as if she is never her own person. She is actually quite a sad character. Her innocence and naiveté about love, future life in Manderley and I think, life in general are recipes for disaster as it’s quite easy to have them shattered by the first evil person that comes her way. In this case the girl had a very bad luck of contending with evil Mrs. Danvers and most importantly, with dead Rebecca. Mrs. de Winter’s submissive behavior became quite frustrating to me and I just wanted to go over there and shake her and tell her to wake the heck up and start standing up for herself. She finally had but I can’t go into the reasons (you’ll have to read it to know). The only thing I can say is she didn’t do it because she thought one day, ‘Okay, enough of this bullying, I am not Rebecca but I am a person that deserves respect and will get it!’. No, she did it only after having gotten a validation from another person.

Rebecca is called a classic, Gothic romance and I tell you, just when I thought I got it all figured out, I got smacked with a twist after twist. And the character of Mrs. Danvers has to be one of the most evil in the history of mysteries. I was glad to see her cry after Rebecca. It wasn’t because I am just such an evil person myself that enjoys the emotional suffering of others. It was because up to that point, I started thinking that maybe Mrs. Danvers died with Rebecca and it was her demonic ghost governing the Manderley household. I was relieved to find out she had human feelings.

It is true that it took me a long time to finish Rebecca, but instead of feeling the usual frustration that comes with reading a book for an extended period of time, I am happy I allowed myself the luxury to spend more time in the world of Manderley. It would have been a shame, had I read the whole book in one sitting.

Book Info:
Title: Rebecca
Author: Daphne du Maurier
ISBN: 0385043805
Published by: Doubleday

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eclectic/eccentric

My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier

Do you have books that as soon as you finished reading them, you were sorry the story ended? Or maybe you would read the story slower than usual, savoring every phrase and paragraph as one would savor a favorite piece of candy, because you didn’t want to part with it too soon? I hope you do and you would because I think that such books are the grand reward for reading altogether. And My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier was such a book for me.

It is a typical gothic mystery but at its best. A distant cousin Rachel bewitches Mr. Ambrose Ashley during one of his winter stays in Italy. Ambrose leaves his beloved estate in Cornwall every year in winter due to health problems, leaving his cousin, Philip Ashley, to look after the household. Ambrose raised Philip from infancy and it is no wonder that a twenty-four-year old boy loves Ambrose as his father and mother both. It is further no wonder that Philip is shocked and jealous of the mysterious cousin Rachel who he thinks stole Ambrose from him. The quick marriage ends as abruptly and unpredictably as it started. Mr. Ashley dies suddenly in Italy without ever having returned to Cornwall with his new bride. And now, cousin Rachel appears at the doorsteps of the Ashley’s estate leaving Philip with no choice but to make her welcome as the widow of Mr. Ambrose Ashley. Philip’s attitude towards her and the amount of trust he is willing to place in her will ultimately decide whether she is a woman of virtue but a victim of unfortunate circumstances or a conniving person with evil purposes.

As you can tell from my opening paragraph, I genuinely enjoyed My Cousin Rachel. It is one of the classics that I know I will be returning to time and again. The language was poetic and captured my attention right at the beginning. Mind you, I am not a fan of poetry, but when such flawless tone and manner of writing as we find in classic poems is engaged in a novel, I instantly fall in love with it. That is the case with du Maurier. There aren’t, after all, many novels out there from which I want to commit to memory passages found in the first ten pages. One such quote jumped at me right when I started reading My Cousin Rachel. It’s short but beautiful and strangely reflective of my own character:

“Disliking our fellow men, we craved attention; but shyness kept impulse dormant until the heart was touched.”(p.6)

That’s only a small taste of what Ms. du Maurier could do but it portrays perfectly, in my opinion, how there really is no need for elaborate descriptions of character, to capture the essence. And here goes my next point. Du Maurier’s writing in My Cousin Rachel, as in her other books, is an exquisite example of the golden rule for authors to show and not tell. While the descriptions of Cornwall’s natural landscape are rich but never boring, I could probably count on my fingers the times that any adjectives were used to describe the characters in the novel. And I came to know them like my own family or at least next door neighbors. Not once were I confused or frustrated by such a thing as lack of depth and trust me, I don’t think that the word “one-dimensional” ever existed in du Maurier’s dictionary. I think you get my feelings about My Cousin Rachel by now. I enjoyed it so much that I already wish I could read it again for the first time.

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Special Thanks to Danielle J. from Sourcebooks for sending me a copy of this book.
Don’t forget to enter my “Happy Birthday Daphne!” giveaway, if you haven’t already! It ends on May 31st.

Book Info
Title: My Cousin Rachel
Author: Daphne du Maurier
Published in: 2009
By: Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

Happy Birthday Daphne! Giveaway

Today would be 102nd birthday of Daphne du Maurier, author of famous Rebecca. I have recently been introduced to this wonderful writer and remain under her spell. To celebrate Daphne's birthday, Danielle from Sourcebooks offered two books to give away to two lucky winners (one each). Here are the books:

Frenchman's Creek : "Jaded by the numbing politeness of Restoration London, Lady Dona St. Columb revolts against high society. She rides into the countryside, guided only by her restlessness and her longing to escape. But when chance leads her to meet a French pirate, hidden within Cornwall's shadowy forests, Dona discovers that her pasions and thirst for adventure have never been more aroused. Together they embark upon a quest rife with danger and glory, one which bestows upon Dona the ultimate choice: sacrifice her lover to certain death or risk her own life to save him." You also can read my own review of this novel.

My Cousin Rachel : "One of the world's great storytellers, Daphne du Maurier spins a dark gothic tale of passion and unswerving love that turns to suspicion and fear. Rachel, a woman of exquisite beauty, descends on the great Cornwall estate of Philip Ashley. Despite his aroused suspicions, she soon enchants him. In this tale of good and evil, Philip must decide whether the glorious Rachel, the recent mysterious widow of his beloved cosin, is out to destroy him or is the innocent victim of devious men with a tremendous longing to be loved. His fate and his future lie in the answer to this deadly question."

The Rules:

1. Leave a comment with your email address. Once again I remind you, if you do not leave your email, you will not be entered in the drawing.

2. The giveaway is restricted to U.S. and Canada only this time.

3. It ends May 31st so you have two weeks to enter.

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A note to readers from me: I just wanted to tell you that I absolutely love Sourcebooks editions of these two books. I know it is said to not judge the book by its cover but in this instance the covers are great.

'Frenchman's Creek' by Daphne DuMaurier

I always am hesitant when it comes to reviewing or writing about classic literature. It’s not because I don’t like it but quite the opposite. Classic writers had the true talent for creating art but it is very often very difficult for me to pinpoint exactly why I loved a certain classic. The overall quality rather, the ability to transport me to the world seen through the eyes of its creator, the feel of the novel and how it leaves me in the end are the signs of true talent and not a learned skill. And so is the case with Daphne Du Maurier and Frenchman’s Creek.

Lady Dona St. Columb suffers from what one might call a mid-life crisis. It’s the age of Restoration in England and as she approaches her thirtieth birthday, Dona feels fed up with London, with her husband, and with herself. To remedy that, she escapes the life of boredom and aimless living by going with her two children to her husband’s country estate in Cornwall. She only seeks internal peace and to find her true self, away from the demands of high court and the phoniness of those around her. She finds peace at Navron House but not for long, because she also finds a French pirate and his crew moored in the creek near the house. And with the Frenchman’s appearance her true sense of adventure awakes. But the quest she embarks upon has its consequences which sooner or later Dona will have to face.

I thoroughly enjoyed Frenchman’s Creek. The opening of the novel seems quite different from other historical fiction. It starts with a description of the creek and Navron House in contemporary settings (contemporary to Du Maurier) and from there a reader is transported to a different time and thrown into the lives of people, who are now forgotten but who once occupied this place. I love how the nature is an omnipresent element throughout the novel. It seems to be a part of Dona, of her other self she wasn’t aware of while living in London but that she found in the country. The descriptions of the birds’ songs, of grass leaves swaying in the summer breeze, and the ominous views of the river and the creek were all very evocative and really aroused my imagination as I didn’t think they could. I found it really wonderful how Du Maurier, through her writing, managed to impose on me the changing atmosphere of Dona’s life. The first part of the book made me feel as if everything stood still, just like I imagined Dona felt about her life, bored, disenchanted and lazy, with no purpose and no goal ahead. However, as she meets the pirate and a wonderful craving for change and adventure rises within Dona, I felt my own excitement growing. I actually think that only a chosen few writers have managed to influence my mood and my manner of reading as the story progressed to such extent. Add to it the romance, the mischief and quite a few thrills, and you have a great book. Dona’s character was naturally my favorite one. This woman’s longing for change, escaping mundane life, refusing to accept that this is it, the end of the road for her speak of great courage for those times. She wants to find her own, true self and will not escape from it once it’s found. I really liked Frenchman’s Creek, it reminded me why classics are classics, endured for many generations and will be read by countless others.

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Special Thanks to Danielle J. from Sourcebooks for sending me a copy of this book.