Rebecca will ruin Daphne du Maurier for you. Because it’s so good and so perfect of a novel that if you read it first, you will be chasing that particular dragon for ages in her writing. So if you can avoid it, read a few of her other books along the way first. Here, read “The Birds” right now, I’ll wait: http://hhs.helenaschools.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/2016/08/the_birds_by_daphne_du_maurier.pdf So My Cousin Rachel is about the to be a movie starring Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin, which is more or less perfectly well cast. […]
When your husband tells you he killed someone, you might want to be a little nervous
Rebecca is one of those books I was always assumed I had read. I knew the basics of the plot, and of course the famous opening line, “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” When I realized I’d somehow missed reading it, I picked it up. It’s the perfect book to curl up with on a rainy Sunday with a cup of tea. While I didn’t love it as much as everyone else seems to, I certainly enjoyed it. While working as the […]
Women Can Be Scary Part 3: Daphne du Maurier
Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, is a classic that has been characterized as a romance and some sort of gothic chick lit. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rebecca is a dark and suspenseful novel, reminiscent of Jane Eyre, with an ending that involves violence and is far from happy. Like Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, the reader might find him/herself rooting for a murderer and feeling distinctly uncomfortable about that. Rebecca is set in the 1930s mostly at a seaside […]
“We’re not meant for happiness, you and I.”
Goodreads overview: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” So the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter remembered the chilling events that led her down the turning drive past the beeched, white and naked, to the isolated gray stone manse on the windswept Cornish coast. With a husband she barely knew, the young bride arrived at this immense estate, only to be inexorably drawn into the life of the first Mrs. de Winter, the beautiful Rebecca, dead but never forgotten… her suite of rooms never touched, […]