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It offers a grand story that is both modern and timeless. This concise book by Daphne du Maurier shows her as one of the English language's most stellar writers.In only a few chapters she takes us through a catastrophic story of love, loss and redemption through the eyes of a naive, but trustworthy, young narrator.It is tragic as all great literature must be, and yet hopeful.If you haven't read this novel, do so soon.
It was a little difficult to get into, but I am very glad I kept reading. I have not quite finished this book, but it offers twists the further you read.
Daphne du Maurier is one of the best novelists of our time and Rebecca is one of the best suspense novels of our era. Her untimely death was a terrible shock to Manderly and the people who knew her. The author succinctly shows us how perception and reality can be perceived as polar opposites and the consequences of misconstrued assumptions about others can lead to estrangement and confusion.Rebecca is the deceased, first Mrs. de Winter, arrives at Manderly she is bombarded with a house enshrined to the memories of the first Mrs.
The story is very intense and sets a hypnotic, haunting mood and keeps you turning the pages from the enticing beginning to the surprising end.This novel has it all, murder, mystery, romance, and suspense and it is one of the best love stories ever written. The second Mrs. The key players, from the brooding Maxim de Winter, the sinister Mrs. Ms. Danvers, the beautiful Rebecca, our story's narrator, and de Winter's haunting estate, Manderly, are so real and come alive as characters. This enthralling novel encompasses the very best of romantic suspense and murder mystery.
De Winter feels she will never fit in but before long she realizes that all is not what meets the eye. du Maurier has written one of the finest gothic suspense novels of our time. de Winter and when our narrator, the second Mrs. De Winter who, by all appearances, was the perfect wife and socialite - beautiful, intelligent.
Now I'm reading a cute little mystery by Joanna Challis that features duMaurier as a young woman involved in a mystery that inspired the Rebecca story. It was faithful to the storyline and the character personalities, but for various reasons I didn't enjoy it quite as much. Things are often never as good as you remember, but that wasn't the case here. It still had the same modern gothic sense of foreboding and subtle malice, a delicious little shiver for the spine.
She comes from an illustrious and fascinating artsy family of actors, writers, and painters, and I'd love to read a biography of her at some point. DuMaurier's classic gothic suspense novel, the book she's best known for although I wager it's not her best (I have two others by her in my TBR pile, so we'll see). Having fun with the whole Rebecca canon here). I'd forgotten that the first name of the narrator is never revealed, and you know her only as the second Mrs. The dead first wife of Maxim deWinter - the glamorous, famous and beautiful Rebecca, a haunting presence in every way. Of course there's the unforgettably sinister Mrs.
Reading it as an adult, married woman as opposed to a 15-year old high school-er gave it a much different perspective, too. I remember reading this as a teenager, and always wanted to re-read it. She may have a skeleton or two in the closet as well - bisexuality, a love affair with a woman, and other salacious bits. I couldn't quite remember the specific details of the underlying mystery - that is, what really happened to Rebecca - from when I read it so many years ago, but as soon as I got close to it I did remember, and re-read it all again in wonderfully chilling detail. Danvers, who remains to this day a literary template for the classic evil housekeeper. Then there's Manderley, the house of legend that is itself a dark and psychologically haunted character, very much imbued with a life of its own. Might write a review for it later, if I get a chance. :)
Found a beautiful leather-bound edition at a secondhand bookstore, and it even includes a smattering of illustrations (I wish publishers still did that). deWinter. (Soon after finishing this I read the sequel written some years later by Susan Hill, long out of print but which I found at a library sale in Carrollton. "Last night I dreamed of Manderley", that now-classic opening line, is as wonderfully foreshadowing as I remembered, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the story had lost none of its luster in the re-read, which so often happens. It would be intuitive to assume the narrator is based on the author, as many of those things tend to be, but I've heard that Rebecca's character is based on duMaurier herself, who was known to be a beauty in her day and a bit of a glamour queen in her own right, much sought after by the paparazzi and the buzz of many a social circle. "Rebecca" is the name that rings in your head, as it's meant to. Nothing supernatural here, yet a haunting is precisely what it us. You never feel a distance in that, though, maybe because she tells the story in a first-person narrative, so it's as if you're reading her diary.
First off, Bronte's `Jane Eyre' stands as a testimony of one woman who stands up for herself and thanks to several wild twists of fate gets a happy ending. "Happiness is not a possession to be prized. The story takes off then, and shoots into a new bold direction where the romance blossoms, Maxim and her marry and move to his big mansion called Manderley where a creepy housekeeper called Mrs. By the end we know that although they remain married, both characters are doomed to always be haunted, always be troubled and always remember what happened. In my opinion, it is her most personal effort, her most strong and powerful.
At times, yes. In the end, you can tell that `Rebecca' in all it's glory, its power, and style is DuMaurier herself in its own special way. The marriage is failed in the end. Jane Eyre, although dealing with demons, tends to focus more on the main character and deals with one woman's entire life, rather than a single time period. Whether this is true or not, I don't really know. It is a quality of thought, a state of mind," her heroine suggests early on. DuMaurier. "We can never go back," says the narrator at the beginning of Chapter Two, "that much is certain.
It also has a happier ending, where as `Rebecca' doesn't. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us, would stir again." By reading that line, we can clearly see DuMaurier was writing about the demons we all keep locked away in our closets, the things that haunt us, torment us and obviously, in her heroine's and husband's case, ruin us. There are tons of little one liners that seem to suggest she had a strong connection with her writing. Daphne DuMaurier, who is little known today by many modern readers, published her fifth novel, 1938's 'Rebecca' which went on to become of the most popular novels of all time. Is `Rebecca' melodramatic. DuMaurier herself. When reading `Rebecca' I find that the novel deals more about marriage, and how it fails, and the things we do to keep it going.
But, be it damned or hailed, 'Rebecca' is a novel that still stands today as an intricate work of deep set emotions, psychological insights and complex relationships among human beings during the course of one hopelessly doomed and failed marriage. Is `Rebecca' a masterpiece. First off, Ms. DuMaurier was sued in court for the act of plagiarizing the novel but won her case, it has also been called a rip off of Charlotte Bronte's well known 'Jane Eyre' I have read both novels and although Jane Eyre stands today as a classic, it is not anything like DuMaurier's `Rebecca'. And, later, one of the characters suggests that there is almost nothing worse than a failed marriage. Give it a read, it is worth it, still.
It has been called a gothic novel, which is not far off, for the atmosphere of DuMaurier's Rebecca is something of sinister and cold, with Manderley as its forbidding crown and of course it's now deceased former mistress, Rebecca herself.Mind you, the novel is slow at first, taking quite a bit of time with a lengthy introduction, which as mentioned in any other review of this novel, contains one of the most well known lines in fiction, "Last Night I Dreamt I went to Manderley again', but the beginning creates a cold, depressing atmosphere that quickly turns into an interesting, if not odd, romance between a strange rich English man named Maxim DeWinter and the unknown protagonist of the novel who is never given a name, a ploy obviously done on purpose by Ms. I would say so. Always.I also believe that is this a very personal work for Ms. I find it relatable, and insightful as well as a gripping emotional mystery. Maxim seems to think so, suggesting what happened between his first wife and him. Yes. Rebecca will always haunt them.
I do suggest reading her other works, especially, "I'll Never Be Young Again," and "My Cousin Rachel." But, I will not lie, `Rebecca' is not for everyone. They will go on living forever in a state of dull compliancy trying to escape the past. And, although I claim DuMaurier as not only my personal favorite author, but as one of the best I have ever read from, I will say that `Rebecca' takes the cake for her very best. Danvers and the looming presence of a Maxim's infamous first wife torment the young new bride into a realm of terror and mystery.The book itself has quite a bit of controversy surrounding it. It is said, that DuMaurier herself was unhappy with her own marriage and highly suggested in her biography as well as the dramatazion of her life in the BBC special, `Daphne' which makes the claim that Daphne DuMaurier had two lesbian affairs. It's a disaster. `Rebecca' although, deals with a woman who once again, like Jane, marries a rich man who owns a creepy old mansion and has a secret about his former wife, is a different story.
They will never happy.
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