Yay I've gone bronze and no tanning bed in sight!!
Thanks to everyone for your ratings and comments...
Yay I've gone bronze and no tanning bed in sight!!
Thanks to everyone for your ratings and comments.
I always try to return all ratings and if I promise an E and don't get back to you feel free to give me a poke.
Sue
Member since:30.05.2009
Reviews:410
Members who trust:89
REBECCA
Just hearing that line -"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again" gives me goose bumps!!
I just LOVE this book. I first read it as a young teenager, many years ago, after my godmother introduced me to Du Maurier's work and I was immediately hooked. It is a book that I return to over and over again.
If you have not read 'Rebecca', I envy you, you cannot unread the books you have read. You have all that mystery ahead of you, you are about to be completely and utterly absorbed in one of the best stories I have ever read. Don't read 'Rebecca' expecting to read a classic love story, because that is not what it is. 'Rebecca' IS about love, both past and present, but it is also a thriller, dark, almost Gothic, creepy but most of all intriguing.
After the initial haunting, atmospheric words the beginning of the book does not hint at the story that lies ahead of you.
The narrator and central character of the book, a shy twenty-one year old girl - whose first name we never know - begins the novel in Monte Carlo where she is working as a companion to an elderly Mrs Van Hopper
When the unbearable social climber, Mrs Van Hopper hears that the infamous Maxim de Winter,
a widower who's beautiful wife, Rebecca, has just died in a boating accident, is a guest at the hotel, she tries desperately to get herself invited to De Winter's acclaimed and beautiful Cornish home - Manderley. When Mrs Van Hopper is taken ill our 'heroine' and Maxim enjoy each other's company. As we expect, Our narrator is swept off her feet and marries the man who is twice her age.
We next meet the new Mr & Mrs De Winter as she is taken as a seven-week-old bride to Manderley. The romance that she expects though isn't there and she is left to her own devises to find her way and make her mark on the beautiful - but unwelcoming - house. Our new Mrs De Winter feels as if she is living in the shadow of the beautiful and enigmatic Rebecca and the housekeeper - Mrs Danvers - does nothing to help in fact she makes things lots worse. Du Maurier makes the reader realise just what a terrifying character Mrs Danvers is with this description of her _ "someone tall and gaunt, dressed in deep black, whose prominent cheek-bones and great, hollow eyes gave her a skull's face, parchment white, set on a skeleton's frame".
To make things worse Mrs Danvers has obsessive devotion to her late mistress and refers to the late Rebecca as 'Mrs De Winter' rather than our heroine. The house itself is almost like a character in the book, and adds its own contributions to the new wife's concerns ......."when the leaves rustle, they sound very much like the stealthy movement of a woman in evening dress, and when they shiver suddenly and fall, and scatter away along the ground, they might be the pitter, patter of a woman's hurrying footsteps, and the mark in the gravel the imprint of a high-heeled satin shoe."
She becomes convinced that Max doesn't love her but is in love with the memory of his late wife, he cannot even mention Rebecca's name although it is on everybody else's lips as they tell the new Mrs De Winter just what a wonderful, beautiful and charismatic person she was. Servants continually compare the new Mrs de Winter with Rebecca, visitors to the house judge her, and her husband grows further away from her and she feels that she can never compete with the memory of the dead woman, Mrs Danvers emphasises this with the words, "She's the real Mrs de Winter, not you - It's you who are the shadow and the ghost". Eventually, after lots of twists and turns the truth about Rebecca and Maxim is revealed.
I will say no more of the plot as if you have not read it I do not want to spoil the story for you.
WHY DOES OUR 'NARRATOR' NOT HAVE A NAME?
Daphne Du Maurier's original answer to this question was that she couldn't think of one and she set herself a challenge to write the whole story without naming her. This was actually very clever as it made her character seem so much less a person to the wonderful Rebecca, showing that she was that insignificant she didn't need to be given a name. Whereas the name 'Rebecca' comes up time, and time again - in fact the book is named after her.
THE WRITING OF 'REBECCA'
Daphne Du Maurier started to write 'Rebecca' in 1937 in Egypt where she had travelled with her husband who had been posted there with the Grenadier Guards. Her two daughters' Tessa and Flavia, stayed in her beloved Cornwall with their nanny The book was completed when Tommy was posted back to England 'Rebecca' was published in April 1938.
The house 'Manderley' is, thought to be based on a combination of two houses that Daphne Du Maurier knew in her youth. One was a house called Milton, near Peterborough, where she stayed as a child; - seemingly this house had a very severe housekeeper - could she be who Mrs Danvers was based on? The second house was Menabilly, located just outside Fowey in Cornwall - a large house hidden away at the end of a long driveway with huge grounds surrounded by woodland, and a pathway, which led down to a cottage nestled beside the sea, with two beaches sheltered in a little cove. The house was empty and neglected and later in her life actually lived at Menabilly and did much of her writing there. Menabilly is mentioned in several of Du Maurier's books, and I have fond memories of a hot August, sat reading one of these books on the beach below Menabilly.
"Rebecca" is such a gripping tale that it fascinated the late Alfred Hitchcock, and chose this story to make into a film. But even Hitchcock - the 'Master of Suspense' , did not do justice to this gripping tale in his classic 1940 black and white film. 'Rebecca' remains one of my favourite and one of the most memorable books I have ever read.
Summary: I wish I hadn't read it already - I'd have that pleasure still to come.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Advantages: Character driven novel; Introduced to 12 other novels Disadvantages: Clare?s character not fully developed; spoilers on the books that are discussed
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