The novels of Daphne du Maurier

I am probably going to vote for The House on the Strand, because it is my canonical Favourite, ~just because~ even though I don't think the writing is her best book, thematically it is the one that has most captured my imagination! (Walking around Cornwall, one often gets the sense that there are sort of... timeslips, where you can walk down a certain path and accidentally end up in the Deep Past for a few moments - combine this with the idea of a powerful, life-threatening hallucinogenic and oh boy you have My Favourite Novel ever.)

But I love loads of these. For me, honourable mention to Rule Britannia (which I really should read again, because I read it perched in a converted bus house, high on a Porthtowan cliff in the midst of a hoolie, convinced I'd be blown off at any moment) - which, despite offending American readers, I read as a salient commentary on the Vietnam War - and probably The Glass-Blowers, just for the scale of it.

I saw a young woman on the train last week so absorbed in 'Rebecca' as to be quite touching; she'd switched her shoes out for slippers and looked as if nothing was going to distract her from it up to and possibly including arrival at her destination.

I've never actually had any idea what Du Maurier is about, though. Though I think I've been to the place where Rebecca is set, or someone has told me I have.

All of her novels are *that* gripping, though. She has this wonderful sense of pacing (which I know strikes some people as kinda... ~soap-opera-ish~ and she has been unfairly derided as a kind of "writer of historical romances" but I think that's unfair, there's so much more to her. Like, I don't even have a fix on what she is, because to other people she codes "pirates and rip-roaring yarns" while I tend to think of her as writer of layered family epics?)

The house is Menabilly. Oddly, I've never been there, though I do recognise this is remiss. It's just... East Cornwall is kinda out of my range.

Only knowing du Maurier from the movies of Rebecca, Don't Look Now and The Birds, I guess she codes for me as 'writer of Gothic/Horror'

Yeah, that's the obvious one!

woah woah don't look now? as in red coat, midget killer, donald sutherland getting very sweaty?

yep, based on a du maurier short story

Oh yeah, Hitchcock was a big fan of du Maurier.

My Cousin Rachel!!

I read The Scapegoat too, but I found it kind of dull.

God when she writes about Cornwall, she just takes my breath away. Like, I don't even know if reading her at a susceptible age just primed me to see the things she sees in the Cornish landscape, or if she really has the ability to write about the place in a way that no one else does, but just ~feel the gothic tingles~ at this:

It was a silent, desolate country, though, vast and untouched by human hand; on the high tors the slabs of stone leant against one another in strange shapes and forms; massive sentinels who had stood there since the hands of God first fashioned them.

Some where shaped like giant furniture, with monstrous chairs and twisted tables, and sometimes the smaller crumbling stones lay on the summit of the hill like a giant himself, his huge, recumbent form darkening the heather and the course tufted grass. There were long stones that stood on end, balancing themselves in a queer miraculous way, as though they leant against the wind; and there were flat altar-stones whose smooth and polished faces stared up towards the sky, awaiting a sacrifice that never came.
...
Strange winds blew from nowhere; they crept along the 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 stranger, older peace, that was not the peace of God.

^^^this stuff is like candy to me, sure, but it also has me licking the page and pining pining pining for Cornish granite and proper Cornish moors.

Oh, I liked The Scapegoat, but granted, I was totally hooked by the whole "strange doppelganger" thing.

I think by the time I read it, the plot seemed too contrived and ott for me, and the thrills were no longer there.

I thought I had read more, but I think I have only done Jamaica Inn (and don't remember much about this tbh), the House on the Strand (ditto), and Rebecca (I do remember a lot of stuff about this but used to get the plotlines of this, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre entirely confused into some incredibly high melodrama). I think probably I also read short story collections, which is why I thought I was more comprehensive than I am. Anyway, this was back when I was ~11-14 so I'm not sure I'm fit to vote.

I've realised that I've been not to the location of Rebecca but to the location of the Jamaica Inn. I think.

Could maybe draw parallels between Jamaica Inn -- Wuthering Heights and Rebecca -- Jane Eyre definitely.

Yeah, I've only read Rebecca. Will use the results of this poll to direct my further reading.

If no one has read anything but Rebecca, the poll may not be much use! ;-)

This is actually a reminder to me to fill in some of the gaps.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I could have sworn I voted in this! And yet there's nothing for House On The Strand, which I thought I voted for.

Rebecca's poor showing in this doesn't rly inspire me to read any DDM, tbh

The fact that 3 votes registered shows a lot more about ILB and its tastes than it does about DDM but, really, your loss if you don't investigate her work any further. But that might just be me being disillusioned that ILB is so clearly for A Certain Type of book fan, and that type is nothing like me. Oh well. *can't do the ASCII shrug but imagine this is one*

DDM is awesome, not sure why ppl wouldn't want to read her books!

If she had written something called My Husband's Stupid Housekeeper in sure she would have a much bigger readership.

I didn't vote for the reasons stated above, but this thread has made me plan on re-reading some.

Yeah, I've only read Rebecca. Will use the results of this poll to direct my further reading.

― Inside Lewellyn Sinclair (cryptosicko), Friday, March 7, 2014 1:19 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, this sure makes it easy to decide which my next two DDM's will be!

I'm halfway thru The Parasites and I think it's fantastic so far

I'm reading My Cousin Rachel at the moment and I am literally afraid to read the last chapter because there are about 3 competing narratives going on in my head as to what ~The Truth~ could be and I'm quite simply frightened to find out which (or if indeed DDM is just going to leave it hanging and ambivalent.)

I'm quite certain someone is going to die and I don't want it to be the "wrong" person.

Just read Jamaica Inn, the first of hers I've read. After years of her being on my to-read list, I picked it up because we took a Cornwall trip this summer and in true tourist fashion stayed at Jamaica Inn — which is still a pretty cool place, the gift shop and all notwithstanding. The day after we stayed there, we did a long hike on Bodmin Moor and climbed Rough Tor, which I was delighted to discover is where the climactic action in the book happens. The book is great fun, so atmospheric and pretty action-packed, particularly the last third or so. It was especially entertaining to read it with the landscape still fresh in my mind. I'll read more of her — maybe My Cousin Rachel next. I feel like I should read Rebecca, and I'm not saying I won't, but I know the story so well from seeing multiple adaptations that it won't have the same kind of suspense or discovery as her other books.

I had an idea to drive the family down to Devon & Cornwall and listen to audiobooks / radio drama of Jamaica Inn, Hound of The Baskervilles and The Sittaford Mystery during the trip.

I'd recommend it!

(I love all three however Jamaica Inn has bad associations with English classes at school, not it's fault of course, just crappy teacher)

Have only read this one--long stories that don't let go

Not After Midnight, and other stories[2] is a 1971 collection of five long stories by Daphne du Maurier. It was first published in Britain by Gollancz (with a cover by du Maurier's daughter Flavia Tower[1][4]), and in America by Doubleday under the title Don't Look Now.[3] In 1973 it was re-published in the UK by Harmondsworth (Penguin) as Don't
Look Now, and other stories.[5]