Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

Rating: 6/10

Review:

I have heard so much about this book and naturally, I went into it with very high expectations and I will be honest and admit that I have mixed feelings about this book. Considered a classic of sorts, Du Maurier’s Rebecca is a haunting tale of the troubles and travails that the nameless narrator, the second wife of Maximilian de Winter, faces in the ominous house of Manderley. Mr. De Winter’s first wife Rebecca who died recently seems to have left herself in everyone’s memory as a perfect wife hard to compare to, let alone better.

If only the book had stayed with as much suspense, thrill and anticipation as its first line ‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again’, I would have adored the book. The book takes an uncomfortably long time to set up its main plot and more than 250 pages into the book, I was still wondering where the book was going.

Our nameless narrator, the new mistress of Manderley, is so timid, dull and frankly, spineless. She falls into traps laid by the horrid housekeeper Mrs. Danvers time and again. You can see those traps coming, almost certainly. Yet, our narrator does not. Many a time, she withholds vital information from her husband, which you know she ought to tell soon. As she says towards the end of the book:

“Had I made one step forward out of my own shyness, Maxim would have told me these things four months, five months ago”

Which is precisely my point. That would have cut short some repetitive emotions of the anger, helplessness, sadness and pain that she continues to feel seeing herself compared unfavourably to glamorous Rebecca and would have thereby made the book more crisp and thrilling. Anyway, once the main twist happens, though it happens late in the book, things pick up and the plot moves at a frenzied pace. I could not put down the book from that point onward until I finished reading it.

Du Maurier’s writing is sometimes too descriptive, but she is at her best with the characterisation of Rebecca. Rebecca is a character who stays with the reader long after the book is over, much like she stays with those people she knew at Manderley, even after her death. Her memory haunts, makes and breaks events in this book.

This is one of those books I’m looking forward to rereading, because it has a lot of layers that will be worth analyzing when I read it again. To sum it up, I definitely think Rebecca is worth reading, but I personally didn’t find it to be the absolutely amazing book that it is widely praised to be.

My edition of Rebecca has an ‘introduction’ by Sally Beauman, which I’m glad I foresaw would contain spoilers and didn’t read till I finished the book. I do hope publishers don’t include write-ups with spoilers before the story as an introduction! It would work so very well to read an essay about the book after we’re done reading the story, not as an ‘introduction’ which a lot of people might mistake as a spoiler-less overview or outline. I know I’ve done that mistake before!

P.S. Sorry for not posting much or commenting on other blogs in the past few days. My internet is horrid and till it gets back to normal, I'm afraid it will take time for me to catch up with things in the blogging world!