Rebecca

Having read this book many times, I'm hoping a new generation of readers will discover an intriguing mystery without a single vampire, serial killer or one set in some apocalyptic future. Rebecca is dark and strange and almost impossible to put down, especially with the central character dead and the storyteller being a shadow.The book begins with a dream about a house named Manderley perched on a knoll above the sea. The dream is told by the book's narrator and we learn that she once lived at Manderley but can never return.The story really begins in a hotel in Monte Carlo in the 1930's where a young girl is the paid companion to a crass, social climbing older woman, Mrs. Van Topper. The older woman will sink to almost any depth to appear well connected and prominent and plants herself in the hotel lobby daily in an attempt to ingratiate herself with someone she deems important. She spots a man she recognizes as a wealthy,prominent Englishman, Maxim de Winter and forces him to have tea with her.The young girl, whose diary is open to the reader, is horrified by Mrs. Van Topper's obvious attempts to extract personal information from de Winter by giving him the impression that they have friends in common. Although de Winter is not fooled by Mrs. Van Topper, sensing the young girl's anguish, he is kind to her.The flu confines Mrs. Van Topper to her room, allowing the girl more time and she and de Winter begin to spend most afternoons together, something she records faithfully but does not share with Mrs. Van Topper. The diary records the girl's fascination with the handsome, older man who is often brooding and distant. She falls in love with the enigmatic and dashing de Winter, but realizes how unrealistic she is. The narrator knows that de Winter recently "lost his wife," Rebecca, but knows nothing beyond what Mrs. Van Topper has told her: that de Winter's wife drowned near Manderley and he never speaks of it.Quite suddenly, Mrs. Van Topper decides to leave Monte Carlo and the girl is ordered to pack and prepare to leave. In a panic, she feels she must seek out Mr. de Winter to say goodbye and when she does, he proposes to her in an awkward way and she accepts. Mrs. Van Topper is angry and points out how unsuited the young girl is to become "mistress of Manderley."When the girl arrives at Manderley after a rapturous honeymoon, she is awestruck and intimidated by the size of the house and has no idea how to assume her role as Mrs. de Winter. Maxim is off and about the estate seeing to affairs he has neglected and, since the girl is afraid to make errors in social judgment, she leaves all decisions to others, most especially to the head housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, who reinforces the girl's insecurities by continually pointing out the former Mrs. de Winter's beauty, social skills and legions of admirers and friends. The reminders of Rebecca are everywhere; her personalized notecards still in her desk, closets filled with beautiful clothes, fur coats, monogrammed towels and robes with giant R's in script, and the girl becomes convinced that de Winter married her on a whim and remains hopelessly in love with the perfect Rebecca. Rather than learning her role as lady of the house, the girl is terrified that her husband will come to his senses and realize what a mistake he has made and she will lose him. Consequently, she is slow to pay attention to nuances in behavior and speech that would provide clues to what is happening around her.Manderley is famous for its annual costume ball, a tradition de Winter loathes but agrees to suffer through as it is regarded as the height of the social season. The girl worries about how she will possibly live up to Rebecca's skills as a hostess and has no idea what costume to wear. Mrs. Danvers cleverly suggests a costume to replicate one of the many family portraits of long deceased family members lining the walls of Manderley, failing to disclose that her suggestion is for the girl to wear the exact costume worn by Rebecca at the previous ball.On the night of the ball, as a drum signals, she descends the grand staircase to be met with silence, expressions of disbelief and gasps of horror. Maxim yells at her and orders her to go and change. She is humiliated and defeated and refuses to go back downstairs. Then she hears voices outside discussing her. "Guess they had a row and she is refusing to come out." "No one has seen her. Rebecca would have been here there and everywhere." Shaken, she suddenly realizes that as Mrs. de Winter, she has certain obligations and one is to overcome her fear and face the music. She makes it through the ball in misery.The diary is the only information provided, so one never learns the girl's name, nor what she looks like, except for several remarks de Winter makes to her, saying that with a big ribbon in her hair, she would look like Alice in Wonderland Wretched though she is, the girl's despairing self-absorption is shelved by a dramatic event. A ship wrecks close to the shore and divers searching the wreck discover Rebecca's lost sailboat, an event which eventually turns the timid girl into a formidable force.To reveal more might detract from the reader's experience. Written in another time, the lengths to which certain families went to preserve reputations and hide any unpleasantness may seem absurd. The anxiety felt by the girl, afraid to fail but having no idea how to go about gaining skills she is certain she lacks may seem naive to modern women but, in the end, Rebecca is a book about how imagination clouds the ability to see, or even seek, the truth and how living a lie erodes the soul. It is a story about how fear of the truth stops us from finding joy rather than misery and how what we imagine can be far different from reality. The narrative reveals how behind facades there can be nothing more than a cardboard theater set which has been continually propped up by the flimsiest of supports and if one support post fails, the entire structure collapses.This psychological melodrama overlays a deeper message.

I was intrigued by this novel since I read that it was made into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock. Now that I’ve finished it, I’m curious how he interpreted it. But frankly, I was disappointed in the ending and found the main characters irritating. I think it was misclassified as a romance.

In this time of craziness, nothing better than to read an old novel. This one checks all the boxes. I truly recommend it, especially to the younger generation whom I want so desperately to know that people were real, alive with problematic issues many years ago.

"Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again." I must have read REBECCA before, but can't be sure. Still, something of the writing must have stuck. Reading the opening of the forthcoming book ALENA, Rachel Pastan's homage to du Maurier (and my next book to review), I felt such a sense of déjà vu in the opening pages as to make me almost dizzy, and knew that I first had to check the original at its source. I am glad I did so -- and that I chose this Kindle edition, not least for its wonderful concluding essay by Sally Beauman, who puts the novel into a much more radical feminist perspective than the cloak of gothic romance in which du Maurier chose to drape it. [Beauman also wrote her own prequel to the novel in REBECCA'S TALE, events at Manderley as narrated by the first Mrs. Maxim de Winter.]"Last night I dreamed...." My memories had faded into a collage of moods and moments, perhaps from the book itself, perhaps from the several screen versions. Yet one of du Maurier's skills is that, even for first-time readers, the story triggers deep memories. It is both romantic and archetypal. The parallels with JANE EYRE are obvious -- the great estate, the humble heroine, the aloof master, the shadow of a former marriage -- but Charlotte Bronte was tapping into archetypes also: Cinderella and Bluebeard, to name but two, as the Beauman essay points out. One of my surprises in reading the book again now was to find how much time its nameless narrator spends dreaming or daydreaming. Feeling out of place as the modest new bride in historic Manderley, she imagines the servants or neighbors talking about her in disparaging terms. Even when looking forward to something as vague as her future life as chatelaine or as specific as an upcoming costume ball, she plays through little scenes in her mind, imagining how people will greet her and what she will graciously reply. And with almost every step she takes, she imagines her beautiful predecessor Rebecca, the REAL Mrs. de Winter, playing that role before her, with far greater charm and elegance than she can hope to muster."...I went to Manderley again." That "again" is important. For REBECCA is written in unexpected tenses and from an unusual perspective. The entire book takes place in memory; it is a still-young woman looking back at a past when she was dreaming of a future that she now knows she never will have, having been sabotaged by something even further in the past; there is almost no graspable present there at all. It is also a mystery story, but again a highly unusual one. Within a few pages, we already know the essential outcome. The one major denouement comes not at the end, but two-thirds of the way through the book -- and it will indeed be a denouement for those who know the story only from the considerably less shocking Hitchcock movie, constrained by the production codes of its time. So far from being the patient elucidation of a crime, the tension in the latter part of the book comes from how and if a known criminal can escape justice."...I dreamed I went...." Who, finally, is that "I"? Uniquely, she has no name. She is not merely an anonymous narrator, but a nameless heroine also. It is a daring stroke. Does it permit every reader (or at least every woman reader) to cast herself in her place? Perhaps, but we also look beyond her edges at things that she, as a naive narrator though not an unreliable one, does not see. And do we want to identify with a woman so subservient that all her happiness is bound up in pleasing her husband? Sally Beauman thinks not, and believes that the woman we really take away from these pages is the brilliant but never seen Rebecca. Personally, I did not find it so. I was as seduced as anyone into wanting this Cinderella story to work out, But Beauman makes a powerful case that this woman -- whose only identity, as Mrs. de Winter, is borrowed from her husband -- is as much his tragic victim as his bride. For a popular romance, this leaves a lot to think about.

I’m excited to start reading this book. I love this author and I’ve heard nothing but good things about this book.

On the Kindle version, occasionally carriage returns would be inserted into the middle of sentences, thereby making it look like a new paragraph and a little confusing to read. See attached picture.