One of my favourite books from when I was a teen. A great mix of romance, adventure, and gentleman pirate. ( )

Young Lady Dona, fleeing with her two children a debauched lifestyle in 17th century London which has left her ashamed of her behaviour and disenchanted with her life, returns to a relatively small estate in Cornwall, and settles in to rethink her life, only to discover pirates (arrrr) are in the vicinity. She stumbles across said pirates, and they give her back her sense of adventure and spirit, and a love of life again.

In some ways, this is a fairly standard spiffingly fun adventure romance (with pirates, arrrr), only our heroine is already married and so is embarking on an affair which is certainly not standard to the genre. My copy rather sniffily says on the back that Dona is a character that we would all love, despite her somewhat "questionable" behaviour.

I think that the reviewer who wrote those lines never got stuck in a miserable marriage, and quite possibly Dona is a character many women love because of her behaviour. (Not that I'm in a miserable marriage, but looking back at some previous relationships, I am incredibly grateful for living in an era when one isn't bound irrevocably to one man. I made some choices that would never have lasted happily, although they were fun at the time.) ( )

I started this book with a few expectations, I suppose. On some I was correct - the plot, of which I knew a little, is straight out of Mills and Boon, for example... On others I was not. Having 'Rebecca' as my only du Maurier reference point so far, I was interested to find that 'Frenchman's Creek' could have been written by an entirely different writer. The only obvious similarity stems from the descriptive prose, which I recognised from the haunting passages about the path down through the rhodedendrons to the little cove in 'Rebecca'.

'Frenchman's Creek' is like a very, very well written trashy romance novel. Mills and Boon taken a few welcome steps in the right direction. Or maybe Pocahontas in reverse - wild man arrives and turns everything upside down, teaching civilised woman her own strength in the process. Basic plot: Lady Dona St Columb leaves London for the family retreat, Navron House in Cornwall, to escape her oafish husband and her bad behaviour in the face of her sheer boredom. At Navron she can enjoy the sun and the garden and find her 'inner Dona', the woman she has always wanted to be. Then she hears about a ruthless French pirate and his marauding crew who have been terrorising the coastline, robbing the wealthy and escaping into thin air... and so the tale really begins.

Even at its climax, the novel is far gentler in its manner than 'Rebecca', but this isn't by any means a bad thing. Althought it starts in a slightly dry fashion and occasionally slows enough for a bit of cliche and clunk to show through, I really appreciated the lyrical descriptions of Cornwall and the exploration of love and freedom. Likewise, though the characters aren't really fleshed out as much as I might have liked, the two sets of conflicting individuals, experiences and values at its core play against each other very well. I'll definitely be reading more Du Maurier and I'm looking forward to seeing where her style and stories will take me next. ( )

Love story, amazingly done. ( )

Lady Dona has grown weary of her high society life. She is fed up with the endless parties filled of people with too much money and too less to do. It's an inane and nonsensical existence - sleeping until noon and staying up all night in the card houses. Playing silly jokes just to pass time. Boredom of the rich is nothing to scoff at.

Finally, she can't take it anymore, the urge to flee is too overwhelming. Telling her husband that she would like some time alone, she grabs her two kids and a nurse and sets off at break-neck speed to their house at Navron in Cornwall. Upon arrival, she finds there is only one servant, William with the strange accent that she can't quite place. He and Lady Dona seem to almost click at once, then develop a relationship throughout. They have some great repartee!

Dona settles nicely into life at Navron. Playing with the children, getting dirty and enjoying the country suit her just fine and you can feel the real Dona emerging. And the woman here is much more likeable than the woman in the beginning. She is mischievous and funny, laid back and a realist. It's solely to her precariousness that she stumbles across the Frenchman in his hidden creek - she figures quickly that this must be the pirate the locals have told her about. The French pirate that's been stealing from them, the one they have been unable to catch. She also links him to her servant, William, thus securing him as a partner in crime to her meetings with the Frenchman. Adventure awaits her upon La Mouette and she is not going to let this opportunity go by.

DaMaurier writes a smartly crafted novel about one woman's need to escape, the need to feel something real, something tangible. At the same time Dona is a realist and appreciates that she can't escape forever - above anything, she is a mother and knows her place is with them. But, she'll always have that memory, that moment, that is truly hers alone - and she can escape there anytime...with her mind. ( )