My Weekly Book

This blog is not ashamed to state that, if it had to pick a single favourite author, then it would choose Daphne du Maurier, the great unrecognised genius of 20th-century literature. We are passionate about her here. You are therefore pointed towards this Observer article written in anticipation of the fact that we are approaching her centenary.

Nothing particularly new or stunning is revealed, but it is a rather good survey of some of the big du Maurier themes including Menabilly and her relationship to the Cornish landscape; the juxtaposition of Rebecca and Jamaica Inn with Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights respectively; and her resonance with female readers; plus examination of some of her lesser-known but excellent work including The House on the Strand, My Cousin Rachel and The Scapegoat.

Daphne’s unruly passions
Du Maurier was mistress of calculated irresolution. She did not want to put her readers’ minds at rest. She wanted her riddles to persist. She wanted the novels to continue to haunt us beyond their endings. And several of them do.

According to her biographer, Margaret Forster, du Maurier used to make lists of what she hoped to achieve. ‘Number one was atmosphere. That was her secret - she was a creator of atmosphere.’ But to define that atmosphere is less straightforward. Forster writes especially well about the way in which one house [Menabilly] dominated du Maurier’s life - as it does Rebecca (1938). Manderley is as powerful as any character du Maurier created. The house is a love object, yet there is reason to hate it. It is fused with Rebecca, its most complicated ghost. Mrs Danvers, the housekeeper, with deviant devotion, keeps Rebecca’s personal effects enshrined in its West Wing. Like the narrative itself, Manderley is all twisted paths with no straight avenue in sight. And by the end, we have been twisted too into a queasy collusion with the murderous Maxim de Winter. Read on here…

If you’re a relative stranger to du Maurier’s work and, once you look past Rebecca (which is brilliant but rather dominating - oh, and don’t rely on knowledge of the film plot, either) you might find, as I did, that you regarded all the time you hadn’t been reading her books as effectively wasted. So the sooner you start, the less you’ll have to regret…

• du Maurier.org - a site for du Maurier fans

[Search for du Maurier's books on eBay]

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This entry was posted on Sunday, April 15th, 2007 at 10:10 pm and is filed under 2007 news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.