Daphne du Maurier (1907–1989)

If, rather than suspending your disbelief and just going along with the conceit, you instead choose to cry, "Bunk! How can these people not see that John is not Jean?!?", then you are likely to be disappointed in this book. However, if you choose to let that one little (okay, big) thing slide, you will find a marvelously written first-person narrative that thrusts a man, much against his will, into a difficult, nay!, an impossible situation that, nonetheless, he manages to fit himself into. show more As he does, he finds depths within himself that have never before been plumbed. Strength he didn't know that he possessed. And empathy that helps heal these new-found friends and family that he quickly grows to love. Everyone he comes in contact with feels that there is something different about him but they still accept him as the brother, father, son, lover, and boss that they have always known. He, in turn, finds a new life that he had often imagined living - but had resigned himself to never experiencing.

The ending was a true test of my patience as I was hoping for some other conclusion - any other conclusion! But, upon reflection, I soon came to believe that du Maurier wrote the 'right' ending after all. Poignant and profound, The Scapegoat is a splendidly realized piece of literature. show less

The book descended so gently into its deep psychoanalysis of these semi-siblings that I was caught unawares by how deeply invested in these characters I've become. It has some of my favourite relationship-binary themes of love-hate, and sacrifice-selfishness, giving me residual heart squeezes reminiscent of Geek Love and Never Let Me Go.

What had started out as a strangely facetious and lilted portrayal of how a privileged upbringing translates into parasitic adulthoods has turned into one of show more the best multi-codependent characterisations I have read. In retrospect, the characters were already fully realised, which is somehow doubly satisfying: that the reader-detective has to reevaluate the previously-dismissed clues. show less

Philip Ashley, orphaned at a very young age, has been raised by his older cousin, Ambrose, on his farm estate in Cornwall. The two of them have a strong bond and a cosy lifestyle. When Philip is in his early 20s, Ambrose goes abroad for the winter for his health and, much to Philip’s shock, sends news that he has married. His new wife is Rachel, a distant cousin of both of them. Philip is jealous, and the jealousy turns to hatred when he learns that Ambrose has taken ill and died. Did show more Rachel have something to do with his death? Philip means to find out.

This is a wonderfully written book. Du Maurier excels at describing Philip’s conflicted feelings — jealousy, resentment, denied infatuation, hero-worship and more. And because we only ever see Rachel from his point of view, we’re left to try to figure out from her actions and speech whether Philip has the right idea. In some lights she is a sinister murderess; in others she is an innocent, grieving widow. In a way this somewhat reminded me of the first tale from A Monster Calls, in which the lesson is that everyone is a mixture of good and bad, not unremittingly evil or wholly good.

I borrowed this from the library but might have to buy my own copy (or give it to my mother and borrow it from her). show less

Rebecca is the world of film-noir as described in a single novel, and it is surpassed by none across the board of crime fiction and mystery alike. Du Maurier as a writer made Alfred Hitchcock the director that he would become, except that the latter always gets the credit over the former. As the reader, you share the same psychosis that imperils the narrator and are just as naïve, helpless and disoriented as you live her journey through grey, somber Cornwall and the silent, enigmatic show more corridors of Manderley. With Rebecca, Du Maurier transformed the romantic-gothic trope popularized by the likes of Jane Eyre and embellished it with a sensational modern air, and so became the birth of the thriller. show less