I was several pages into the first story of this collection, the titular Don’t Look Now, when I realized that I’ve seen this movie! I remember liking the movie just fine, mostly because I love Donald Sutherland, but also thinking that the pacing and climax were a little strange and unconvincing; the horror elements were there but it didn’t quite pack a punch for me. This is also how I felt about the short story, and indeed, about this collection as a whole.
I won’t include summaries of all the stories; for me, Don’t Look Now and A Borderline Case were the standouts. Both were deeply psychologically weird, with truly horrific endings – not necessarily gory, but surprising and uniquely shocking. A Borderline Case especially had a persistent throughline of dread and bad decisions; at every turn I was thinking oh god what is going to happen to this poor girl. (And in the end she’s fine, but…) If that’s your style of horror, I’d recommend these two stories for sure.
But the other three in this collection I found pretty lackluster. Not After Midnight and The Way of the Cross were almost comical to me; not poorly written but not horrific in the least. The Breakthrough was interesting but again, felt like an odd pairing with the others; and in fact until writing this I forgot all about it, which should tell you something. None of them was terrible, but I was confused about why these stories were grouped together.
I also was confused by this edition of the book. I thought I was buying this one, but I actually bought this one, which has a similar name but is totally different and did not include some of the stories I was interested in, like The Birds. I realize this is my own fault but it still annoyed me!
I don’t know; this was a good introduction to du Maurier’s writing style, which I liked, and I’m glad I read it, but this collection just didn’t stick for me. I might seek out Rebecca and The Birds next October. I’m giving one star each for the stories I liked, but deducting several stars for the Overall Experience.