Rebecca (Penguin Audiobooks)

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Summary: Greatest Mysteries
Review: On the shores of Monte Carlo, Du Maurier's nameless heroine falls in love with and marries the fabulously wealthy Maxim de Winter within the space of a few days. Maxim, a widower, takes his new bride back to his home, Manderly.
Once at Manderly, the new Mrs. De Winter falls into a sinister web of mystery that begins and ends with Maxim's dead wife, the lovely Rebecca. Though dead for over a year, Rebecca still mantains a strong prescence over the entire household and over Maxim himself. The heroine finds herself doubting if her husband even loves her but only married her for companionship for none can replace his beloved, Rebecca.
Rebecca's rooms are as they were the last night of her life. Her servant, Mrs. Danvers, is still loyal and runs the house exactly as Rebecca wished.

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Summary: Dreaming of Manderley
Review: When is a romance novel not a romance novel?

When it's a gothic suspense thriller fairy tale romance novel, such as Daphne duMaurier's Rebecca (Victor Gollancz, 1938, republished by Avon in 1971). The book's staying power can perhaps be best explained because it combines all the trashy, page-turning suspense of modern writers like Stephen King and John Grisham without the pedestrian prose that make King or Grisham such an insult to the intellect. Rebecca is well-crafted without requiring the same kind of concentration as a modern reader would employ when tackling the heightened language of older classics and it's fun without resorting to the formulaic styles of today's mass market paperbacks.

The story is the first-person account of an awkward young maid who, while assisting her mistress on a vacation in Monte Carlo, falls in love with the dashing widower, Maxim DeWinter. Maxim marries her and whisks her off to his Cornish estate of Manderley, where the memory of his first wife, Rebecca, looms larger than life. While the shy narrator tries to fill the shoes of her sophisticated predecessor, Rebecca's presence haunts the foreboding mansion until the new, younger Mrs. DeWinter can find out exactly what became of Rebecca.

For obvious reasons, Rebecca is considered an imitation of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre - a haunting mansion with its own name ruled by a mysterious master with dark secrets about his first wife. But, stylistically, the two are very different. The poor little anonymous narrator of Rebecca lacks the strength and conviction of Jane Eyre's titular heroine. DuMaurier's is a darker novel than Bronte's and her protagonist's final victory is dubious, at best. While both novels have gothic elements, Jane Eyre strives for realism; Rebecca is a sinister fairy tale, with its melodrama and stilted, exaggerated characters. And, of course, Jane Eyre is Victorian.

DuMaurier herself was shocked at Rebecca's popularity, saying she had written the novel merely as a study in human jealousy. But her readership saw it differently. First dramatized for radio by Orson Wells shortly after publication, then adapted for film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940, Rebecca remains duMaurier's best-known and best-loved work, trumping even her 1952 short story, The Birds, which was also made into a Hitchcock film and is more often associated with him than with its original author.

What duMaurier didn't acknowledge is that this rags-to-riches Cinderella story may contain its own Oedipal influences. DuMaurier was born in London in 1907 to actor-manager Gerald duMaurier, the son of artist and writer, George duMaurier. Her mother a sophisticated socialite, the young Daphne was closer to her father and followed in the artistic footsteps of the paternal side of her family. In 1943, she married Major General Sir Frederick Browning, who had lost his beautiful and worldly fiancé in an unusual accident. The constant sense of competition between the narrator and Rebecca may reflect duMaurier's own feelings of inadequacy in loving men whose hearts were already given to women far above her.

Beginning with her first novel, The Loving Spirit, published in 1928, duMaurier's work reflects her passion for Cornwall. Manderley is based on Milton, near Peterbrough where duMaurier visited as a girl, and Menabilly in Cornwall, where she eventually settled with her husband and raised three children. When Hitchcock filmed Rebecca, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, du Maurier's only complaint was that he changed the setting to America, cutting out entirely her beloved Cornwall.

In 1969, duMaurier was made dame for literary achievement, credited with writing the first gothic romance of the 20th century. She died on April 19, 1987. Two sequels were later published with the blessing of the duMaurier estate - Mrs. DeWinter, written by Susan Hill and published in 1993 by William Morrow and Company and Rebecca's Tale, written by Sally Beauman and published in 2001 by Little Brown.

So what makes Rebecca a romance? This is not a tale of passionate embraces or the love at first sight of destined paramours. The emotions that are heightened are those of jealousy, inadequacy, and self-doubt. The narrator appeals to the gauche, insecure little girl in all of us who is given to flights of wild fancy and fears of improbable disaster. That we never know her Christian name underscores her subordination to Rebecca, whose name dominates the cover of the book as well as every corner of Manderley. It gives the sense that the narrator's life did not begin until her arrival at Manderley, at which time she gained the name of Mrs. DeWinter, albeit the second, of course. It also gives the reader a sense of intimacy with the narrator, as if, perhaps, we are a dear friend for whom repeating her own name would be redundant and unnecessary.

But if it's not clearly a romance, it is thoroughly modern. Rebecca has no truly moral characters in spite of its melodrama. All its heroes are deeply flawed and face ethically ambiguous dilemmas. Its villains, if viewed in the proper light, may be sympathetic and we're given a chance to identify with the baddies. Nor is the ending clean and neat. From its opening line - one of the more well-known in modern literature - "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again", the narrator tells us that she is writing from a place of relative peace, but still running from what happened to her as a naive young bride. When the final revelation comes, 300 pages later, it's uncertain how the narrator will respond and, in fact, her response seems incongruous with the rest of her character (arguably the novel's only flaw). However, like the narrator, Manderley is a place readers will dream of returning to again and again.

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Summary: What a mysterious tale...
Review: Daphne du Maurier's love story is a story about love, yes, but it is also a testament to her love for Cornwall. The moors , beaches and woods in this beautiful part of the world are described and portrayed as only by one who has lived and loved in this part of the world can. The story is about a house as well as people. The mysterious house of Manderley with all its secrets is the setting of this novel. Ms. du Maurier actually based her Manderley on an actual house found in Cornwall called Menabilly. The story is about a well-bred, but penniless young woman who makes a brilliant marriage to Max de Winter. All seems to be wonderful for her, but then it becomes sad and quite menacing to Rebecca because her Max seems to be ruled by another woman, and that woman is not alive, so it's very difficult for her to compete. The novel is a haunting and lovely story about the sadness that this young woman encounters during her married life and what she did about it. A true Gothic treasure.

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Summary: The Meek Will Inherit the Earth
Review: Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca is narrated by a timid young lady, barely an adult, who is left alone in the world after the death of her parents. Through fortuitous circumstances she meets Maxim de Winter, a wealthy widower and master of Manderley, a grand country house on England's coast. When this young lady - we never learn her name - enters de Winter's world, she is inevitably compared to Rebecca, de Winter's former wife. These comparisons, and the social demands placed on her in de Winter's world, accentuate her natural anxiety to the point that she begins to consider suicide. At the same time, a maritime accident reveals much about de Winter, Rebecca, and Manderley itself.

This novel explores some popular themes, like the troubles of fabulously wealthy people. But popularity does not in this case imply mediocrity. Du Maurier has created some wonderful characters, including the nameless protagonist, who is surely the heroine of shy people everywhere. She also offers some pretty good plot surprises. Finally, and very importantly for me, she offers some nice scenes of English domesticity (shaking off the water after a walk in the rain, reading the papers in front of the fire, having tea in the library, and so on). Rebecca might be summer reading, but it is good summer reading.


Rating:
Summary: Three quarters of the greatest gothic novel ever
Review: From it's evocative first line, one of the more memorable openings in literature 'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again' Rebecca gradually unwraps to to tell an eerie, mysterious tale. The story is told from the perspective of a nameless, timid, frightened young woman who marries the aristocratic Maxim de Winter, a man several years older than her. After honeymooning in Venice, the couple move back to Manderly, Maxim's large house in the West Country. From her first morning there, the narrator finds things difficult. She is unused to cold formality of the house, the plethora of servants she must deal with, the formidable Mrs Danvers, the housekeeper, who intimidates the narrator and, most of all, the eerie memory of Rebecca - the late wife of Maxim de Winter, said to be tragically drowned in a sailing accident.

It is Rebecca's memory that is everywhere in the great house. For three quarters of the novel, the action is sparse, but this only adds to the suspense as Du Maurier creates scenes of slow drama. Rebecca's stylistic handwriting creeps the narrator when she discovers it in the drawers on her writing desk, Maxim's behaviour appears odd and distant - especially when he expresses reluctance to visit Rebecca's mysterious cottage down by the cove, Mrs Danvers ferocious loyalty to Rebecca almost drives our poor narrator to the brink of suicide and then there is the mist - a shroud of fog that winds and entwines itself around the story on several occasions, subtly emphasising the gothic tone of the novel whilst serving to heighten the gradually building suspense that Du Maurier masterfully creates throughout the novel.

Then, three quarters of the way through, something goes wrong with Rebecca. I can't quite put my finger on it. The plot, up to that point a masterpiece of slow tension, one brick magnificantly and carefully placed on top of the next, suddenly takes off in a harebrained helterskelter of action and intrigue in the manner of a modern thriller. The frenetic pace of the last quarter doesn't suit the rest of the novel at all, it's pace and style being more suited to Dan Brown or Tom Clancy. I was minded of the words of Kazuo Ishiguro, uttered after the Remains of the Day - a novel similar to the first three quarters of Rebecca in its use of suspense rather than action to tell a powerful story. He said 'Plot is the Achilles Heel of so much great western literature. In the great Victorian novels for instance, things always seem to go down hill in the last quarter because the plot, which has hitherto served as a useful mechanism, begins to make all sorts of difficult demands on the author'.

In his writings, Ishiguro does not allow plot to spoil the subtle themes he explores in his work. In Rebecca, Du Maurier is guilty of this to an extent.

Rating:
Summary: what a voice!
Review: i adore this book. the young new bride and all her hesitations, which we all occasionally feel, and the jealousy that we know, that we think we know when we can never catch up with perfection, especially when that perfect is dead. each scene is beautifully constructed, even the conversations which seem dull but simmer with tension. the poor mrs dewinter, gauche, insecure, desperately in love, without the confidence to believe that her new husband loves her... dumarier managed to get everything right in a way which she does not achieve with her other books.

Rating:
Summary: Still a classic, even on a second reading
Review: I recently reread this classic of Gothic romatic suspense. While the story was every bit as enjoyable and enthralling the second time around, some aspects of the novel bothered me a bit more this time than when I had first read Rebecca as a teenager. The characters with whom we're supposed to sympathize -- the unnamed narrator and her older husband, Maxim de Winter -- were not very sympathetic the second time around: the girl too mousy and passive, the man's motivations too murky and suspect. The bad guys -- the sinister Mrs. Danvers, the loutish cousin and even the specter of the dead first wife, Rebecca -- were all must stronger, by contrast, more vivid and, in a way, more likable. Also, the end (which I won't give away here) was very abrupt and, as a result, not very satisfying. I don't mean to over-criticize. This is still a suspenseful, engaging novel, just perhaps not nearly as engaging as I remembered it.

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Summary: A special book...
Review: I think the book is good. The story is about Maxim de Winter, a rich man, who goes to Monte Carlo and who marries a quite young woman there. He takes her back to his lovely country home, Manderley. But in Manderley there is still the ghost of his first wife Rebecca who destroys the happiness of the couple. The autor had a very good idea, to start with the end of the story. Like that the book gets a special touch. But apart from that the beginning of the book is a little bit ardious and boring to read. But it becomes better and better up to the final scene which is very exciting which isn't a happy-end. The whole book is filled with emotions and unexpected expressions.The variation of feelings of the unknown narrator are descripped in a way which allows the reader to go into this person and to feel with her. The feelings change from love to hatred. The book also shows how soon that hapiness can be destroyed and what it means to be compared the whole time with a perfect person, even though that the course of the book shows that there doesn't existe a perfect person without a mistake in the world. I think it the book would be better when the beginning would be shortened and instead of that to embellish the end.

Rating:
Summary: Haunting Images, Engrossing Plot
Review: My family read this book for our Family Book Club. I must confess that we picked it without knowing anything about the book, other than what the back cover said. We didn't even know that there was an Oscar-award winning movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock based on the book.

This haunting, gothic novel kept us on the edges of our seats. There were two points of the novel that took us completely by surprise...but looking back, it all adds up. This book was masterfully written; it is the type you might wish to read again and again.

Comments from our book club:

Mom: Didn't fall asleep once (a feat!). Thought there were a couple of parts that didn't make sense, but after discussion thought it was a good ending (great book to discuss in a book club for that reason).

Dad: Thought Du Maurier's greateset talent was in character development; thoroughly enjoyed watching the heroine of the story as the plot developed.

Me: Definitely one of the best books I have ever read. The plot twists were great. Imagery fantastic. The kind of book that I can't stop thinking about it. Immense fun.

We will definitely get the movie to see what Hitchcock has done with this book.

Rating:
Summary: Lyrical Masterpiece
Review: Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier was one of the best books I ever read. The authors's language beatifully protrays the life of a young woman who marries a widower trying to start over. Unfortunately, the young lady must fight the memory of Rebecca, her husband's late wife, to win him back. But there are many secrets at the Manderley estate, and some, which do not want to be discovered.