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

2-in-1: Cell & From a Whisper to a Scream

I rather like this 2-in-1 idea and decided to give it a regular appearance in my blog. It’s a way of still giving my opinion along with a short summary of books I read without writing an in-depth review. Sometimes I just don’t think I have enough to say about a book to warrant a review, but I still want this book to be mentioned in expressing my ‘bookish thoughts’ on it.

1. Cell by Stephen King

It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of King’s writing. I like not only his creativity in the horror and fantasy departments, but his writing skills as well. Cell, therefore, was no disappointment. It is another kind of the-end-is-coming novel but definitely more gritty, brutal and therefore more believable than what the book market is flooded with nowadays. Clay Riddell, a graphic artist who is finally on the verge of becoming noticed and somewhat successful in his career, witnesses some strange happenings one day after signing his first deal. The happenings turn into a full blown apocalypse when it turns out that all the cell phones transmit a message that resets human brains and turns people into bloodthirsty, murderous creatures. They all act like zombies and the only thing they have in common is a drive to eat and kill all remaining people unaffected by this ‘disease’. Clay, together with others who did not use their cell phones, are now fighting for their survival.

What can I say? I enjoyed this book from the first to the last page. It is scary mainly because, as I read more and more, I started to think that all this may very well happen one day, as crazy as it sounds. But that’s just the way Stephen King writes his horrors. No matter how unbelievable the premise may sound, I invariably find myself believing every bit of it. One thing that may disappoint the readers is the ending which does not deliver a closure. Personally, I didn’t mind that at all. Instead, I saw it as a way of giving a reader a free hand in imagining whether this end-of-the-world would truly be the end or not. If you are looking for a hard-core post-apocalyptic tale, with nightmarish reality, King is always your man.

2. From a Whisper to a Scream by Charles de Lint

Here’s a different kind of horror but just as engaging as the previous one. Thomas Morningstar, a Newford policeman ends up shooting to death a man, who did not stop to pull over. It soon becomes something more than a traffic violation turned tragic. Officer Morningstar killed a serial child murderer. However, things did not end there. Evil merely began. A few years later, Morningstar is a detective and has the case of his life on his hands. Young girls are being murdered in a red-light district of Newford and the police do not have a thread of lead. All of a sudden, a crime photographer, the killed child molester’s daughter and detective Morningstar discover that they have a lot in common and it all has to do with the shooting that had happened a few years back. And it turns out to be evil beyond anybody’s imagination and that evil might as well be too much even for people well-versed in spiritual world.

I was surprised to find out that From a Whisper to a Scream was a horror novel. All the previous de Lint’s books I had read were sci-fi and you know how it is with expectations. I must say however, it was a darn good horror. Charles de Lint has been compared to Stephen King actually and I can see why. The turn of events is unexpected, the characters in this book are nicely developed and yet again, even though I knew it was fiction, I caught myself thinking about the actual possibility of such events happening. The author’s writing is very convincing and he definitely has enough skills to keep a reader up at night.

Giveaway results are in!

The giveaways for The Myst Reader and The White Queen are over and the lucky winners are chosen.

For both drawings I chose randomizer.org and here are the results:

The Myst Reader goes to:

Ruth Ann

The White Queen goes to:

Kate from Neverending Shelf

&

Hannah

Congratulations to all winners. They have been notified of their luck.

And for those of you who didn't win here's another awesome giveaway connected with The White Queen:

http://books.livingsocial.com/the-white-queen

Grand prize package [Retailed at about $4,000]:
· Roundtrip airfare for two to London; hotel accommodations for 3 nights in the Strand Palace, located in the heart of London’s Theatreland
· Tickets for a dinner cruise on the Thames
· A day tour of the Tower of London and St. Paul’s Cathedral
· Day trip to Windsor Castle and Runnymede
· $200 American Express Gift Card

1 first prize winner
· Will receive an e-reader loaded with The White Queen e-book

1 second prize winner
· Will receive a leather-bound edition of The White Queen

Here's an updated widget which also should help you get to that great giveaway:

BTT: Recently Biggest

What’s the biggest book you’ve read recently?

(Feel free to think “big” as size, or as popularity, or in any other way you care to interpret.)

I think that if I read through a chunkster (which I love BTW) it has to be be "big" in every possible meaning of the word. It's big in size, big in meaning, big in popularity, big in importance, etc. but especially big in story. I don't care about ambitious novels written in stream of consciousness or just plain gibberish (I have read them and I will not come back to them any time soon). If a book is over 500 pages, it had better give me a darn good, engaging story.

There are two books which I consider to be 'big' and have read them fairly recently (not this year though, with all the review copies and challenges to complete, I had no time for re-reads):

1. The Stand by Stephen King - all time favorite and a post-apocalyptic classic. As a fan I can only recommend the Complete & Uncut edition counting 1200 pages in hardcover. I know it's huge but when it was first published, The Stand was cut by over 150,000 words and I want a whole story :D. One thing I should mention is that because it's the end-of-the-world masterpiece, everything else I read after that just doesn't measure up.

2. John Adams by David McCullough - one of the best biographies I have read. It is another chunkster with 722 pages in paperback edition but yet again, really worth the time and attention. I loved it because the author is a born storyteller, the story of our founding fathers and the birth of our country is beautiful and reminded me how many lives were put on the line so I could live in a free, independent and democtratic country of the United States.

A giveaway in honor of Sourcebook's Georgette Heyer promotion

I am excited to offer you, my dear readers, another great giveaway. This time thanks to the courtesy of Danielle from Sourcebooks, Inc. Please read on to find out what the promotion and the giveaway are about. It's fun.

Sourcebooks B&N Heyer Receipt Promotion

This September, Sourcebooks is exclusively releasing The Foundling by Georgette Heyer in Barnes & Nobles stores Nationwide!!

Sourcebooks is holding a fabulous receipt promotion! Send us your receipt/proof of purchase of The Foundling from your local Barnes & Noble to our office or a scanned receipt in an email to danielle.jackson@sourcebooks.com and you’ll be entered to win a $200 Barnes & Noble gift card! Receipts must be dated between September 1 – September 31, 2009, and can be from an in-store or online purchase. Any questions please contact danielle.jackson@sourcebooks.com.

But WAIT—you can win a book from Sourcebooks now! As a thank you to Reading Extravaganza for helping spread the word about our B&N Heyer Receipt Promotion, Sourcebooks is giving away 2 books from the list of books below! Leave a comment about your favorite Heyer moment and you’ll be entered to win your choice of book! 2 winners—US and Canada addresses only please.

Sourcebooks is so excited about the warm embrace everyone has given the Georgette Heyer reissues! Good luck—we look forward to hearing from you!

Send your Barnes & Noble The Foundling receipts to
Sourcebooks, Inc. c/o Publicity PO Box 4410 Naperville, IL 60567

Remember: Leave a comment! Two lucky commenters will be able to choose a book from the following:

1. The Spoken Word Revolution edited by Mark Eleveld
2. Poetry Speaks Expanded edited by Elise Paschen and Rebekah Presson Mosby
3. Letters From Pemberley by Jane Dawkins
4. How (Not) to Have a Perfect Wedding by Arliss Ryan
5. Hundreds of Years to Reform a Rake by Laurie Brown
6. A Chain of Voices by Andre Brink
7. First Lady by Michael Malone
8. The Ultimate Bartenders Guide by Ray Foley
9. Improvisation for the Spirit by Katie Goodman
10. The Successful Novelist by David Morrell

Join our Georgette Heyer mailing list!: http://www.sourcebooks.com/spotlight/georgette-heyer.html

Giveaway 411:

1. The giveaway will last until September 14th
2. There will be two (2) winners/ one book each.
3. Valid for US and Canada addresses only.
4. To be entered, please leave a comment about your favorite Heyer moment, which book from the list you'd like to win and a valid email address.

Good Luck to you all!!!!