Jamaica Inn

Mary Yellan’s mother is dying. Her final wish is that Mary go to Bodmin to live with free-spirited Aunt Patience and her husband. When Mary arrives, she is shocked to see her Aunt Patience is a timid, dispirited woman, broken by the abuse of her husband. Jamaica Inn is located in the bleak moorlands of Cornwall and when Mary arrives, she not only has to deal with its bad reputation, but also with the landlord, her uncle Joss Merlyn, a known criminal who has successfully evaded the law.

Uncle Joss warns Mary not to look outside at nights when she hears sounds, but she does anyway and discovers a smuggling ring. Her uncle is a smuggler and probably a murderer too. She also discovers that there is another person, who is secretly working show more with Joss. Before long she finds herself tossed into a world of shocking human brutality, as she is drawn into the smuggling, theft and murder.

Although the story is a mystery, the author uses the bleak setting to unfold a true classic of gothic romance and adventure. This novel is very well written and I found the characters to be very distinctive. My only complaint is that the narration of the several landscapes Jamaica Inn was surrounded with, were overly descriptive at times and slowed down to story a bit. Nevertheless I could envision Jamaica Inn totally and particularly the smuggling scenes. What a fabulous book, and du Maurier was still a book or two away from her most famous novel, Rebecca. show less

Today's Jamaica Inn is a bit of a forlorn tourist trap so read this before you pass by. It really is a rollicking good story and it picks up on Du Maurier's grand theme - that people are complex, unknowable until the end and almost impossible to judge. Doing the right thing is never clear when you don't have all the facts. She is mistress of story-telling and writing. The book is a deserved classic.

Digital audiobook narrated by Toni Britton

From the book jacket: The coachman tried to warn young Mary Yellan away from the ruined, forbidding place on the rainswept Cornish coast. But Mary chose instead to honor her mother’s dying request that she join her Aunt Patience and Uncle Joss Merlyn at Jamaica Inn. From her first glimpse on that raw November eve, she could sense the inn’s dark power.

My reactions
What a wonderfully atmospheric, dark, sinister tale! I shivered with the damp, cold fog, strained to see by faint candle or lamp light, listened to the whistling wind, the baying hounds, and the alternating whispers and shouts of a rabble of men up to no good.

Mary Yellan is a marvelous heroine. Young and somewhat naïve, she is show more still a strong woman, resolute and determined to make the best of her situation. As many have told her, she is too young and pretty to live alone, so she goes to her Aunt Patience. But instead of finding a happy woman with ribbons on her bonnet (Mary’s memory of her Aunt’s only visit some twelve years previous), she finds a frightened, dispirited woman clearly afraid of her own husband. And Uncle Josh? He’s a foreboding hulk of a man who rules his establishment with an iron fist and is unusually secretive about his business.

As Mary struggles to make sense of her situation and determine what, if anything, she can do about it, she meets two men who will become intricately involved: Jem Merlyn (her Uncle’s brother, and a horse thief) and Francis Davey (vicar of the local parish). They could not be more different, and yet each will help – and hinder – her in unexpected ways.

Du Maurier’s plot is intricate and complex and had several twists & turns in it. I wish there were a sequel so I could find out what Mary Yellen is like as an older woman!

Toni Britton does a fine job of narrating the audio version. She has a good pace and differentiates the characters sufficiently, so I had no trouble keeping track of who is speaking. show less

After reading Daphne du Maurier’s most renowned classic novel, Rebecca, I became intrigued by her other works. I was astounded by the sheer number of full-length novels and short stories she had written. A friend recently read and highly recommended Jamaica Inn, so I promptly added it to my reading list.

Jamaica Inn, a gripping Gothic thriller set on the wild, windswept moors of Cornwall in the early 19th century, follows the story of young Mary Yellan. After her mother’s death, Mary honors a promise to live with her aunt and uncle at the isolated Jamaica Inn, a grim coaching house shrouded in sinister secrets. As Mary delves into the inn’s dark ties to smuggling and beyond, she finds herself ensnared in a web of danger, betrayal, show more and moral ambiguity. Trust becomes scarce, and the line between hero and villain blurs, leaving Mary to navigate a world of suspense and intrigue.

I absolutely loved this masterpiece from the very beginning. The haunting Cornish moors, the menacing atmosphere of the inn, and Mary Yellan’s fierce determination drew me into a vivid world of smuggling, secrets, and suspense. Du Maurier’s lush prose and masterful ability to build dread made every twist and turn thrilling, keeping me on the edge of my seat.

I borrowed the audiobook of Jamaica Inn from my library using Hoopla. While there are many editions and recordings of this classic, I particularly enjoyed the narration by Barbara Rosenblat. Her execution of the chilling nature of the story was truly beautiful, bringing the characters and their world to life in a way that left me spellbound.

I have photos and additional information that I'm unable to include here. It can all be found on my blog, in the link below.
A Book And A Dog show less

I enjoyed coming back and reading this. Yeah, the plot is predictable for me but it’s build-up and its central mystery were just as intriguing. The story does pick up for me, and though I knew what came, I still wanted Mary to escape.

Jamaica Inn does not read as quickly as I anticipated, perhaps the result of deliberate pacing by Du Maurier. I see now the appeal for Hitchcock: tension arising from a conflict clearly developed for the reader but not quite so clear to the characters involved. The plot twist is almost telegraphed, despite a red herring or two and eventual happy ending.

Mary Yellan's struggles with Joss Merlyn and Jem Merlyn are reflected in her view of herself and her perception of the Cornish landscape. "Men and women were like the animals on the farm," Mary ponders to herself [126]: she has no illusions about romance, and yet finds herself helpless before her attraction, and hates herself for it. Explicitly she portrays her struggle as one of instinct show more against reason, and is certain her self-discipline will fail. Worst, she finds women weaker than men on this account: "She wished women were not the frail things of straw she believed them to be." [144] Interesting that despite the happy ending, this flinty outlook isn't amended: her romance is either lucky, or perhaps short-lived (the tale ends without comment). The moors also reflect Mary's struggle, their inhospitable bogs and tors and marshy grasses literal and figurative obstacles to her escape, though Du Maurier describes them poetically and appreciatively.

Apart from the premise of wreckers (land pirates), of enduring interest are an undercurrent of malevolence tied to Druids, old gods opposed to modernity, and the landscape; and the character of Francis Davey, the vicar of Altarnun.

Hitchcock's adaptation was interesting: typically, several characters were fused into one, others edited out entirely. And very characteristic of his psychology of tension, the film informs the viewer in the opening moments that Joss leads a band of wreckers. Sadly, the Vicar is excised entirely from the script, and the moors are for all practical purposes missing, as well, in favour of the Cornish coast and the Inn itself. The book is by far the better experience. show less

Six-word review: Atmospheric thriller, strong heroine, literate author.

Extended review:

Daphne du Maurier has an extraordinary knack for creating atmosphere. She gives us the moors of Cornwall, "a silent, desolate country...vast and untouched by human hand." Bleak expanses of hard, scrubby ground and soggy, treacherous marshes are broken by the high tors, massive slabs and towers of stone that are monstrous, moody presences:

Wild sheep dwelt on the high tors, and there were ravens too, and buzzards; the hills were homing places for all solitary things.... When the wind blew on the hills it whistled mournfully in the crevices of granite, and sometimes it shuddered like a man in pain. Strange winds blew from nowhere; they crept along the show more surface of the grass, and the grass shivered; they breathed upon the little pools of rain in the hollowed stones, and the pools rippled. Sometimes the wind shouted and cried, and the cry echoed in the crevices, and moaned, and was lost again. There was a silence on the tors that belonged to another age; an age that is past and vanished as though it had never been, an age when man did not exist, but pagan footsteps trod upon the hills. And there was a stillness in the air, and a stranger, older peace, that was not the peace of God. (page 42)

In this country there are men as savage as the land, men who are beyond knowing the horror of their own deeds.

And this is the place to which young Mary Yellan comes, bound by a deathbed promise to her mother. Rogues and thieves and drunkards are not the worst of what she will meet as her drama plays out. Mystery and menace darken the wintry days she spends under the roof of her evil uncle, and there is little enough to give her hope of escape to a better life.

But Mary is made of sturdy stuff, despite the repeated reminders, in several characters' voices, of the presumed weakness of her sex. It's not a matter of defying the clichés; they're treated as natural limitations, as they were for centuries before feminism raised awareness. But they don't define Mary. She has natural advantages, too, such as strength, determination, and loyalty. She's not a quitter, even against all the odds. The horrors she's forced to face and the challenges she must meet would be enough to bring down many a lesser character of either sex.

One of the things I especially like about this tale is that the author doesn't try to justify everything her protagonist does. We don't have to be badgered or maneuvered into agreeing with Mary or necessarily thinking we'd have done the same in her place. We just have to believe that what she does is honestly within her character, and it is. This gives the author leeway to show us a pleasing complexity of character, with the kinds of flaws that make it ring true. Like Eustacia Vye, Mary shows a strong silhouette against a grim background, while still being both feminine and vulnerable.

There are several places where I wondered why something happened as it did, but there's only one plot point that I found truly jarring. As the momentum accelerates, a scene occurs in which Mary must provide access to a second-floor bedroom:

She...tied one end of her blanket to the foot of her bed, throwing the other out the window.... (page 234 in this 1936 edition)

I'd like to see that done. Try tying a knot in a blanket, enough of a knot to support someone's weight when secured to--what, a bedpost? The thickness of a blanket, any blanket, even one as thin as a sheet, is going to make it very difficult to tie, with a knot so bulky that it will gather up a lot of material and leave little to hang down. This sort of thing works in movies and animated cartoons, but could it possibly work in a realistic environment? I doubted it enough to stall out temporarily at that point; but of course I came back to find out what happened to Mary. And I blamed the author for that absurdity, not the character.

The deep interconnections of character and place, out of which events proceed with a seeming inevitability, create a satisfying unfolding of plot, even if you guess the key to the mystery a little too soon. The exciting finish is worth the wait. show less