Rebecca

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Manufacturer: Daphne du Maurier
Brand: Gothic Mystery
Brew: Hardback
Steeping Time: 357 pages
Tea Service: Recommendation
Strength:

Synopsis: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again…”

Ancient, beautiful Manderley, between the rose garden and the sea, is the county’s showpiece. Rebecca made it so – even a year after her death, Rebecca’s influence still rules there. How can Maxim de Winter’s shy new bride ever fill her place or escape her vital shadow?

A shadow that grows longer and darker as the brief summer fades, until, in a moment of climatic revelations, it threatens to eclipse Manderley and its inhabitants completely…

Rebecca is my mom’s favorite book, and after thirty-plus years on this planet, I finally read it.

And Mama? You’ve got great taste.

Over the years, I’d somehow developed this notion that Rebecca was a ghost story—a spooky story set in a haunted mansion near the sea with a spirit that never lets the residents rest. And in a way, it is. Although not at all what I expected.

Even though it may not have been the type of spooky story I was expecting, I was hooked by that first dream of Manderley. Of walking up the overgrown driveway to find the house abandoned, bathed in moonlight while the sea gleamed beyond it. That’s all I needed. I was in. Daphne du Maurier’s writing evoked such incredible imagery for me. Because of this, I knew instantly that my heart would stay with Manderley long after the book left my hands.

Manderley, abandoned or not, is the exact sort of setting I love.

A big, gorgeous house by the sea with beautiful grounds and splendid scenery, but shrouded in a sadness that is always lurking at the edges. Yes, please. The house reads like a character in its own right. It has personality, poise, grandeur. Something about it and the estate captivated me, and even now, many months later, it still arises in my mind at the odd hour, just as mysterious and haunting as ever.

While the house is a character in and of itself, it seems that our protagonist and narrator is but a ghost of one. Mrs de Winter never feels like her own person. She doesn’t even get her own name. We only ever know her as Mrs de Winter, and that speaks volumes about her. She seems to exist only in the context of someone else. She is the companion of Mrs. Van Topper, the wife of Maxim, whose first wife died in a boating accident the year before, but never one who stands alone. In name and story, she is just a shadow, moving through the world on the hip of someone else. And it is in this shadow, as her obsession with Maxim’s late wife grows, she becomes an incredibly unreliable narrator.

I started off really caring for her and wanting the best for her, but it killed me to watch her allow people to step on her. Mrs de Winter is the ultimate people pleaser at an incredible detriment to herself. All I wanted her to do was clap back. Say something. Do something. I wanted to reach through the pages and teach her how to do so. While frustrating, it was an excellent reminder to do that in my own life. Set boundaries. Speak up. Don’t go quietly.

I wanted to teach Maxim the same lesson.

He was a strange one who was hard to put a finger on. One moment, he’s the most confident, suave man on the planet, but the next, he’s retreated so far inside himself that you don’t know if he’ll ever come back out. When he first meets the soon-to-be Mrs de Winter, he carries a sadness for his late wife, but he comes out of his shell for our narrator, and, for a time, they are happy. But things take a turn once he brings the new Mrs de Winter home to Manderley.

Immediately, we know that our narrator will have a hard time filling the shoes of Maxim’s first wife, Rebecca. Everyone seems to compare our narrator to Rebecca any chance they get. Our narrator is already fragile, but this pushes her into an entirely different realm. As a reader, it’s hard to tell what is actual meanness and what is perceived. Not only is our narrator unreliable, but many of the other characters are also, which built wonderful suspense and kept me guessing until the end.

Mrs. Danvers, the maid of the late Mrs de Winter, is an immediate foe. I wanted nothing more than to push her from an upper-floor window, along with her ever-drunken friend, Jack Favell, who seemed to constantly show up at the worst time. Mrs. Danvers alone is the best kind of character that I love to hate. She exists to make our narrator’s life an absolute misery, and she succeeds. Most of the time, she succeeds by invoking the dearly departed Rebecca, whom our narrator will never be able to replace.

Rebecca, the book’s namesake, is a phenomenal character who never was.

Her memory haunts every single person associated with Manderley, a dark shadow standing over everyone’s shoulder, whether they knew her in life or not. It’s a fascinating choice to have your namesake character never actually appear on the page. She is only a memory, a trace of a person, yet she infects and invades every inch of Manderley and its inhabitants. She is there in the shadows, somehow controlling everyone’s choices, deciding their actions. It’s haunting, and I love it.

The pace was slow, methodical at times. Even though I thought a few areas dragged a little, overall, I couldn’t put it down. The writing paints a vivid scene, allowing me to walk the grounds of Manderley with ease. It’s captivating in its imagery and description, something I adored. Not only that, but dread seems to writhe just beneath the surface, tainting every second of our narrator’s time at Manderley. Masterful suspense builds from this constant feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop. While the pace may meander, taking time to build the history of Manderly and its inhabitants, the twists that are waiting for you will be well worth the read.

I won’t spoil anything for you, but I will say that Rebecca threw me for loops I never saw coming.

There were moments where I gasped, moments where my jaw was on the floor, and even an instance where I physically stood up and kept reading. I don’t often read books more than once, but I can tell you whole heartedly, I’ll be revisiting Manderley again, searching the long corridors for Rebecca.

If you love a haunting story that will sink deep into your bones, Rebecca is the one for you. I found it haunting and unreliable in the same way as The Haunting of Hill House. There’s always something just out of sight, but is it real?

Have you read Rebecca? Leave a comment and let me know what you thought about it! Want to read it for yourself? Click here to get a copy of your own.
Cheers,
Lydia