Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier Glorious, ecstatic read

 Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Glorious, ecstatic read

Rebecca is one of the best books ever written.

And since a masterpiece has the power to transcend, to go beyond the limits of its covers, this one has inspired a glorious film

-          Rebecca, with Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine and the fascinating George Sanders as the villain has won the Academy Award for Best Picture

The story is powerful; it has a romance, the fight between good and evil, a complex Maximillian de Winter and a delightful heroine.

-          Wait a minute!

-          I mean the new Mrs. De Winter and not Rebecca

Because one of the intriguing and yet appealing aspects of this tale is the fact that the one that gives the name to the novel is actually dead.

As Maxim de Winter is trying to find solace- we would learn to know better later in the book- in Monte Carlo, he meets this young woman.

She is the one who will play the story teller and in many ways the real star of the show, adumbrated at times by the shadow of Rebecca.

Maxim de Winter is well known as a rich gentleman, a widow proprietor of an envied estate with an appealing name:

-          Mandalay

The young girl is the hired help or assistant of an American rich woman who is stupefied when Maxim de Winter shows interest in her employee.

In fact, after a few drives in the car and an outburst of emotions and a few rude remarks, the widower asks the young woman to marry him.

I would note that Max de Winter, as Favell calls him, is not altogether the knight in shining armor and has a dark side.

That may contribute to his allure, but he feels obnoxious at times and his proposal of marriage sounded weird:

-          Would you rather go back to America or to Mandalay

-          You mean you want a secretary

-          No, I want to marry you

The dark secret we would learn that he hides explains in large part his misbehaving and I will not go into that, in the odd chance that you want to read the book after going through this, out of more than 12,800 reviews on Goodreads.

Once she becomes Mrs. De Winter, the married woman travels to Mandalay where she has to meet with the Evil.

The Darth Vader, Anton Chigurhs and Saurons of this story are:

-          The aforementioned Rebecca, her cousin and lover Jack Favell and the latter’s friend and housekeeper at Mandalay Mrs. Danvers

The terrible “Danny” is playing cat and mouse with the new, young Mrs. De Winter right from the start.

I was thinking earlier if she was not a hidden lesbian, seeing as she had been so enamored with her late mistress.

Whatever the case might be, she tries very hard to make the new lady of the house raving mad and suicidal.

A climax is reached when there is an upcoming costume party, wherefore she makes Mrs. De Winter choose the absolute wrong dress.

Having done that, the helpless young mistress drives her spouse crazy, but that annoyed me and I still say:

-          Ok, now we know what was on your mind, feelings of guilt and all, but still, why did you need to shout to the poor wife so loud?

-          You criminal bastard- this last is a sort of a joke

 Things get complicated from here, with first an attempt from the said Chigurh in women’s clothes to make the lady of the castle jump to her death.

Then there is a terrible storm and looking for a fresh wreck they find the remains of the boat with which Rebecca had sank.

Only there are surprises and the end keeps the reader breathing hard and waiting for new developments in a thrilling detective story, for chapters at the end.

And now for some quotes:

“Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.”

“...the routine of life goes on, whatever happens, we do the same things, go through the little performance of eating, sleeping, washing. No crisis can break through the crust of habit.”

PS: there are two ratings, because I have read this twice, the latest in the form of an adaptation for the BBC