Rebecca

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 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.

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I picked this one up - I happened to recall the book being around when I grew up, and actually couldn't recall if I'd read it or not. That was enough to bring it home.

I had a blast reading it. Daphne du Maurier writes beautifully, even poetically at times. The slow buildup is masterful, with several moments of comic relief as we get to know our heroine, the new and naive Mrs. de Winter. She is clumsy, easily embarrassed, easily frightened, and has an overactive imagination when it comes to what she believes is being thought or said about her, as she is very aware of her perceived faults. This makes her likable as well as foolish, like a gamboling puppy you want to befriend as well as tame. She show more remains nameless, a clever bit by the author that adds to her growing intrigue as she tries to fit in to her new lifestyle as mistress of a grand old house, Manderley. We can all relate to being young, feeling awkward and out of our element at times, so it's easy to be drawn into her quest to learn more about her deceased predecessor, the mysterious and beautiful Rebecca.

I really enjoy it when I get far more than I expected from a book. I'll be looking for more du Maurier after this one, and I want to see the Hitchcock film of this book, too. This is a perfect book to curl up with on a rainy day. Beware, about two thirds of the way in it becomes difficult to put down. show less

Nearly everyone knows "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." The novel begins and ends with a dream and an awakening, forming a perfect circle to embrace what is still one of the best psychological thrillers I have ever read. Even when you know what's coming, you don't catch the author at her craft; there's not a single wasted word or scene, nor a moment when you feel cheated or tricked. Misled, a little, sure. But in a brilliant way. This is how you create suspense, balance tension with relief, feed the reader just enough to make them crave more. It's hard to make me feel OK about rooting for anyone to get away with murder, but Du Maurier managed. I'm very glad I revisited Manderley myself, as I had forgotten many of its show more finer points, including just how exquisite some of the prose is. This is literary fiction, in the very best sense of the word. show less

The audiobook of Rebecca was recommended on a book blog I contribute to, and when I learned the narrator was Anna Massey I had to try it. I haven't read Rebecca for years and years, but I read it first in my teens and then reread it a couple of times. Hearing it rather than reading it was a different experience, and the fact that I'm much older probably affected my responses as well.

It's still a great story, with wonderful twists and turns, and Du Maurier's descriptions and evocations of the settings are wonderful. Manderley is a character in its own right. I remembered almost all the revelations before they occurred, but I didn't remember everything about the story.

The characters are not likeable or relatable, but I don't think they show more were supposed to be. There's so much about the class system and class relations, and Maxim de Winter was as trapped in his privileged position (or at least constrained by it) as the Narrator was in hers. It's not a romance but I think it is, in the end, a love story.

Hearing the book read brought home how much description there is in the novel. It's very 19thC in that sense, and also in the sense that it is the 20thC version of a Sensation Novel. You can see how those spawned this kind of Gothic.

Massey was magnificent. All her character interpretations were excellent, and she changed her voice and accents as needed without overdoing anything. I could listen to her forever. show less

This was one of those books that I had always wanted to read, but hadn't.

Now I've read it, and I still haven't.

I had heard good things about this, so I was expecting it to be good, and it almost was, but not quite. I listened to this as an audio e-book, and while the narrator did a fine job, she just didn't have enough to work with to make it come to life. The characters were vaguely interesting, but they never felt fully formed. Things would build a little bit toward suspense, but then it would deflate. I felt intrigued, but I never really felt invested. Every time I would approach caring, things would just kind of stop. I felt like du Maurier should have pushed a little harder, should have dug a little deeper. I liked Beatrice a lot, show more but she wasn't in the story much. The only person who was at all interesting was Mrs. Danvers, and even she never felt real. I was interested in the story, but it wasn't at all great. I was all set to give it four stars. The plot was interesting, but the characters were dull and stale and flat, and everything felt rushed.

AND THEN . . .

And then I looked at what other people thought about it, just to see if I was missing something. And someone pointed out something in Beatrice's back story, and I thought, "That's weird. I don't remember that from the novel." And then another thing. And another thing. I thought, "Well, THAT didn't happen," and, "That's funny: that didn't happen either." I thought perhaps I was reading about one of the film adaptations, and the filmwriters had thrown in a lot of really interesting things that weren't in the source material. But no. These were all comments about the book.

So I went back to my material, that is, the audio e-book, and I played around with the settings for a while until I found the section that has information about the digital item, and I saw that this edition is abridged. And it must be really, really ABRIDGED. (I had to be satisfied with capitalizing this, but picture it in an angry thick font.) I don't like abridgments at all, but this has to be bad even by abridging standards. There is some no-holds-barred, hard-core book surgery happening here, because SO MUCH of what other people were talking about never happened, and it looks like this novella is actually supposed to be a full-length novel. And if it had been a print book, I might have felt the weight of it in my hand and known right away, but there wasn't any immediate indication for the digital title.

So it was a disappointment because I never felt like I had enough insight into the characters . . . but I never had enough actual story, either. I'm not comfortable rating it because I still haven't actually read whatever it was du Maurier wrote. But please be warned, this particular edition leaves much to be desired. show less

I've read this book about every 5 years since I was in my late teens. I'm in my late 60s now, and it's interesting how much my perception of the characters has changed over time. In my teens I would have given "Rebecca" 5 stars, now 2 stars is generous. I used to find the second Mrs. de Winter sympathetic, now she just annoys me with her hysteria and melodrama (and yes, probably because I'm annoyed at the memories of myself at that age, acting like that!). But the biggest change has been my perception of Maxim de Winter -- I used to just go along with du Maurier's idea of him as the brooding, angst ridden romantic male lead. Now I just want to snap at him to stop acting like a damn sullen teenager, and start using his words with his show more baffled too-young wife so she doesn't have to walk around on eggshells constantly. And I've finally realized what icks me so much about the relationship between Mrs. Danvers and Rebecca. It's not, as some suggest, an emotionally lesbian relationship, it's that it's a depiction of a sociopath who raised a psychopath. It would be fascinating if it weren't so repellant. And I have to say that my opinion of du Maurier's writing style has taken a nosedive too, much too overwrought for my liking as a cranky old woman. show less

If you haven't read the book or seen the film, I recommend that you avoid this review because it contains spoilers.

Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca has long been a favorite of mine, though I haven't reread for some time. The psychological drama and well-drawn characters make it one of the more memorable and suspenseful books I've ever read. This time I listened to the audiobook read by Anna Massey. As I said, I've read the book before and have also seen the old movie with Laurence Olivier, so I wasn't sure the audiobook would hold my attention. Well, after one hour I was completely sucked in by the perfect prose and sensitive reading! There is something about hearing a book read that brings out the poetry of the language — something I may show more not fully appreciate when reading at my usual breakneck pace.

The story is told in the first person by Maxim de Winter's second wife. She met him at Monte Carlo, where he had fled to escape the memories of his first wife, Rebecca, who had died ten months before. From the first, Rebecca overshadows everything in the story like an ominous cloud. It's striking that we never learn the name of our narrator, though we are told that Maxim calls it "lovely and unusual," and spells it properly (which we are told is rare). No, the name Rebecca blots it out, even standing over the whole work as its title. When the second Mrs. de Winter comes to the family's ancestral home, Manderley, she is beset by the ghosts of the past. Rebecca sat in this chair; Rebecca wielded this pen. Everything is kept just as the beautiful, vivacious, brilliant Rebecca had ordered it. And the second Mrs. de Winter is so shy and diffident, she cannot grapple with these shadows. She is convinced that her husband still loves Rebecca, and that she can never win his heart as completely as he has won hers.

We follow the second Mrs. de Winter through the first four months of their marriage, through days of peacefulness edged by something bitter, through the beautiful grounds of Manderley, and the strange wild beauty of the sea. With her, we piece together the bits of the past that Maxim never speaks of, from conversations with other people. Why does everyone tiptoe around the memory of Rebecca?

Manderley, in the end, had to burn. We are constantly told how lovely it was, and it truly sounds like a heavenly place... but then Maxim tells his wife that it was all Rebecca's doing, that her incredible taste and energy made it into the showpiece of the county and laid out those perfect gardens, furnished each room meticulously, guided each element of the decorations. For Maxim and his new wife to start over, the old life must be destroyed. But for Maxim, it is as if part of himself was burned away.

The burning house motif at the end of a story of passions is not unique; both Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847) and Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (1936) use it. There are other similarities as well. Both Rebecca and Jane Eyre are told in the first person, and their relationships with the leading men (Maxim de Winter and Mr. Rochester, respectively) are similar. But unlike Jane Eyre, it is not the heroine in Rebecca but the villainess whose name is on the book's cover. In both stories the shadow of the hero's first wife poisons the relationship between himself and the young female narrator. In Rochester's case, the wife is a madwoman locked at the top of the house. At Manderley, the wife is physically dead, but her reach extends from beyond the grave. Neither Rochester nor Maxim is entirely innocent, either, when it comes to his first wife.

I have not read Gone With the Wind, so my comparisons between it and Rebecca may seem clumsy. I was struck by du Maurier's use of the phrase "gone with the wind" and her focus on a main female character who is a villainess. I don't know if it was deliberate; I would have to read Mitchell's book to compare them properly, but perhaps the other similarities will occur to those who have read both works. Rebecca was published in 1938, two years after Gone With the Wind appeared.

I don't think anyone can equal du Maurier's ability to conjure an atmosphere. The first chapter, which tells of a dream the narrator has about an overgrown and wild Manderley, is an extravagant display of the author's prodigious skill. Every line is poetic, and produces a vivid picture in the mind. As I listened to Massey reading it, I thought I would be content to hear it for hours. The narrator's observations about the people around her are also incisive and telling. Every character is perfectly believable and convincing. You feel as if the story could really have happened.

I would like to praise again Anna Massey's perfect reading of this story. It is unabridged, of course, but it never once lagged. Massey does a wonderful job with the voices for the different characters, switching quickly between them in the dialogue, and at times I forgot all about Massey because I was so absorbed in the pictures she was creating in my mind. They couldn't have chosen a better actress for the part. I believe she also played Mrs. Danvers in the 1970s BBC miniseries of Rebecca, though I have not seen it myself.

The film starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine is quite good, though they switched certain things around. The biggest change they made was how Rebecca died. I don't want to get too spoilery here, but I wish they had the courage to keep it as it happened in the book. It's a crucial point. I understand that this was fudged because of the Hayes Code that governed film plots back then. A murderer could not get away with murder; he had to be punished. The characters themselves were quite faithful to the original story, and most of the events too.

The more recent iTV adaptation is enjoyable, but has some big flaws. Emilia Fox is great as the second Mrs. de Winter, but they made her too assertive. Some of the scenes were clumsily written, and they should not have cast a real actress to play Rebecca in the flashbacks! They were coy and never showed her full face, but it was still a mistake. I wasn't really a fan of Charles Dance's unremarkable Maxim de Winter, or how they made Mrs. Van Hopper slinkily coarse rather than disgustingly so. And the general feel of this script did not have that sense of impending doom that the Hitchcock film captured so well.

Overall, I cannot recommend this book (and the audiobook) enough. The mystery is really well-done, and the narrator keeps you fascinated with the events and characters. If you like mysteries and suspense, you simply must try Rebecca. You will remember it long afterwards; I remember it as one of my very first forays into adult fiction, and it gripped me. Highly recommended. show less