Hungry Hill (Charnwood Library) [Import] [Hardcover]

Dame Daphne Du Maurier (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 688 pages
• Publisher: Charnwood (Large Print); Large Print Ed edition (June 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0708981216
• ISBN-13: 978-0708981214
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Daphne du Maurier was born in 1906 and educated at home and in Paris. She began writing in 1928, and many of her bestselling novels were set in Cornwall, where she lived for most of her life. She was made a DBE in 1969 and died in 1989.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An unexpectedly great read!, August 9, 2005

By 

Beach Reader (Florida, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hungry Hill (Paperback)

Or perhaps I should say "an expectedly good read" as it is by Daphne Du Maurier! I picked this book up in a log cabin in the Adirondacks, it having thoughtfully being left there by a previous vacationer, and couldn't put it down! While at some points in the novel you feel Du Maurier is being an upper-class patrician, there's an ironic twist to the tale that proves a thought-provoking dessert. Following the travails of a wealthy, landed Irish family, the Brodericks, the book is a critique of how the energetic, entrepreneurial founder of the family fortune left a mixed legacy to his descendants. The family's wealth does not leave it immune to the less attractive traits created by nature and nurture nor to the changing times. The story of this compelling clan (and their rivals) is a reminder that, no matter how fortunate, there is a very great limit to the control we have over our destinies.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Stereotypes hard to ignore in 19th century Anglo-Irish family saga, September 1, 2007

By 

K. S. Hanley "writer/editor" (Northbrook, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hungry Hill (Paperback)

Far from Du Maurier's best, this multi-generational tale follows the rise and fall of the Brodricks, an Anglo-Irish clan based in the vicinity of Cork (which here masquerades as 'Slane,' not to be confused with the actual Slane situated north of Dublin). 'Copper John,' on the verge of reaping untold wealth from his copper mine on Hungry Hill, is cursed by Morty Donovan, an Irishman whose family was displaced by John Brodrick's English antecedents and who has deeply resented the family ever since. The old curse plays out in a reasonably entertaining chronicle of untimely death, familial misunderstanding, and ultimate destruction in the space of a century, ending in the 1920s at the time of the Irish Civil War. Du Maurier's depiction of the Irish population ("irresponsible . . . their heads full of nothing but dogs and horses," according to Copper John) displays uncomfortable prejudice, and although the Irish are the survivors at the end of her tale, her portrayal of the proud Brodricks as progressives contrasted with the shiftless local folk demonstrates a lack of sympathy for the Irish perspective which strikes the contemporary reader as narrow and dated.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Majestic, April 21, 2001

By 

preston jines (ft lauderdale, fl) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hungry Hill (Paperback)

Exquisite period view of our living experience. From the "arranged" to the destined, by choice or by consequence maybe we can never be certain. You can feel the wind in your hair standing overlooking the moor with the smell of the damp earth beneath your soul ... the manor faintly lit by the evening light as you return with the dogs at your feet... the taker or the giver. Fate awaits you... a remarkable story of a generation etched in a time gone by. Daphne du Marier at her finest.