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Daphne Du Maurier

Rebecca Kindle Edition

by Daphne du Maurier (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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The classic Gothic suspense novel by Daphne du Maurier -- winner of the Anthony Award for Best Novel of the Century -- is now a Netflix film starring Lily James and Armie Hammer.

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . .

The novel begins in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady's maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives--presenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave.
"Daphne du Maurier created a scale by which modern women can measure their feelings." --Stephen King

Print length

449 pages
Language

English
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On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Little, Brown and Company
Publication date

December 17, 2013
File size

2807 KB
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Popular Highlights in this book

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Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.
Highlighted by 3,979 Kindle readers
The house was a sepulcher, our fear and suffering lay buried in the ruins.
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I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone.
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Daphne du Maurier (1907-89) was born in London, the daughter of the famous actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and granddaughter of George du Maurier, the author and artist. In 1931 her first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published. A biography of her father and three other novels followed, but it was the novel Rebecca that launched her into the literary stratosphere and made her one of the most popular authors of her day. In 1932, du Maurier married Major Frederick Browning, with whom she had three children.Many of du Maurier's bestselling novels and short stories were adapted into award-winning films, including Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds and Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now. In 1969 du Maurier was awarded a DBE. She lived most of her life in Cornwall, the setting for many of her books. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Library Journal

Surely no audiobook collection should be without some version of this timeless classic, arguably the most famous and well-loved gothic novel of the 20th century, and this production would be an excellent choice. Read in wonderfully British cadences by Anna Massey, all the mysterious and oppressive nuances are made immediate and chilling. We even feel some sympathy for the absurdly timid and cowering heroine; it is, after all, easy to imagine feeling woefully inferior to the predecessor and desperately eager to please. Of course the story requires great leaps of credulity... Forget the movie; it makes mincemeat of the actual tale. A wise seven-year-old once told me, "The book is always betterDit goes right into your head." This is a prime exampleDlisten again; it gets even better. Highly recommended.DHarriet Edwards, East Meadow P.L., NY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Inside Flap

A true classic of suspense in a beautiful new package for a whole new generation of readers.

From the Hardcover edition.

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Back Cover

"Last Night I Dreamt
I Went To Manderley Again."

So the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter remembered the chilling events that led her down the turning drive past ther beeches, white and naked, to the isolated gray stone manse on the windswept Cornish coast. With a husband she barely knew, the young bride arrived at this immense estate, only to be inexorably drawn into the life of the first Mrs. de Winter, the beautiful Rebecca, dead but never forgotten...her suite of rooms never touched, her clothes ready to be worn, her servant -- the sinister Mrs. Danvers -- still loyal. And as an eerie presentiment of evil tightened around her heart, the second Mrs. de Winter began her search for the real fate of Rebecca...for the secrets of Manderley.

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From AudioFile

Marsh successfully captures each character's personality and emotions. J.A.H. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

from the Introduction by Lucy Hughes-Hallett

Daphne du Maurier’s publisher, Victor Gollancz, announcing Rebecca in 1938, called it an ‘exquisite love-story’, which says more for his salesmanship than it does for his truthfulness. Du Maurier herself was closer to the mark when she described the novel as ‘a sinister tale about a woman who marries a widower… Psychological and rather macabre.’

There are few kisses in Rebecca, most of them swift pecks, and the only person who is frequently caressed is Jasper the dog. It’s a novel full of powerful emotions – jealousy being the dominant one. In it love is a disappointing thing. ‘We are happy, aren’t we?’ asks the narrator, ‘Terribly happy?’ ‘If you say we are happy,’ says her husband, ‘Let’s leave it at that.’ There is romance in this book, but it’s not about courtship and marriage. Rather it is the romance of place.

Daphne du Maurier started writing Rebecca in Egypt, where her soldier husband, Colonel ‘Boy’ Browning, was stationed. She seems to have taken little interest in the Egyptians or in the country’s tremendous monuments, and she couldn’t abide the social life of the regimental club and the regimental wives. ‘The effort of talking! I don’t know how people stand it.’ It was so hot that her sweaty fingers stuck to the typewriter keys. The novel she began in Egypt is shot through with nostalgia for Cornwall, and a house she loved there.

To begin then, as the novel does, with Manderley. It is one of the most haunting of fictional houses – more imposing and mysterious than Howard’s End, more solidly concrete than the ‘lost domain’ to which Le grand Meaulnes so persistently seeks re-admittance, more powerfully infused with a half-sinister vitality even than Wuthering Heights. It sits amidst lawns and rose-gardens overlooking the sea. It is grand and ancient and serenely beautiful. But it is also a dark and hidden place. Mrs van Hopper, a comically insensitive character who several times voices a truth from which the politer characters shy away, says ‘I’m told it’s like fairyland.’ Its bewilderingly long drive winds through woods that threaten to close over it. Great banks of rhododendrons covered with ‘slaughterous’ blood-red flowers bar the way to it. It is a labyrinth within which something uncanny lurks: it is very, very difficult to work out its floor-plan. It is the immaculately maintained and smartly furnished residence of a gentleman of the 1930s who drives too fast and eats scones for tea and keeps up with the cricket. But it also resembles the castles and palaces in which the Beast awaited Beauty, in which Psyche foolishly insisted on discovering the truth about her lover Cupid, or in which Bluebeard murdered his wives.

I’m getting close to giving something away here. Those coming to Rebecca for the first time should stop reading at once, and return to this introduction only when they have finished the book. Rebecca is satisfying on many levels, but its framing narrative is a mystery. The suspense in which the reader is kept is brilliantly achieved. This is a book that can be read over and over again, but I don’t want to be responsible for spoiling the delicious repeated shocks to which the first-time reader is subjected.

***

So – to speak now to those already in the know – let us go on from a place to a person, to the second Mrs de Winter. She has a ‘lovely and unusual’ first name, but we are never told it. In order to write about her, though, I must give her one. Let us call her ‘N’, for narrator, a more appropriate epithet for this lank-haired, diffident person than ‘H’ for heroine would be.

She addresses us from a point in time after the story is over. Rebecca has often been described as a reworking of Jane Eyre. There are obvious similarities between the two novels’ plots (impoverished young woman marries rich older man, encounters problems connected with his first wife, and finally achieves a satisfactory relationship with him after the burning down of his house has left him a sadly reduced and pathetic figure). More subtly, du Maurier also follows Charlotte Bronte in giving her heroine a double nature. Just as Jane Eyre is both the young woman of the story and the much older narrator, so du Maurier’s heroine is at once the socially-clumsy, yearning girl that she is when the action begins, and the poised, carefully self-censoring wife that she is as she launches – we don’t know how much later -- into her retrospective narrative. That dual consciousness gives her psychological verisimilitude and complexity, as the twin lenses of a pair of binoculars give a greater depth of focus than a single glass can do.

Reader, she marries him -- not in the final chapter, as Jane Eyre does, but early on in the narrative. That getting her man is a far, far different thing from achieving happiness is evident from the very moment of the proposal. ‘I’m asking you to marry me, you little fool” says Maxim de Winter. In a less subtle work his rudeness might seem thrillingly masculine -- kind of Rhett Butlerish (Gone with the Wind was published two years before Rebecca came out in 1938), kind of hard-boiled Humphrey-Bogartian cool -- but our narrator knows that it is a sign of something wrong, of an emotional flaw in her suitor. As so often in this book, a psychological clue is conveyed by a sensual detail. The tangerine he has offered her is sour. ‘I had a sharp, bitter taste in my mouth.’

Du Maurier’s biographer Margaret Forster has written that in Maxim de Winter du Maurier ‘created a man the reader was bound to dislike . . . harsh, dominant, bad-tempered’. She overstates the case. Maxim is alluringly sophisticated, and his evasiveness and moodiness can be read as Byronic mystery, Byronic melancholy. He is just the sort of man a naïve girl might fall in love with. But Forster is right that it’s immediately obvious this is not going to be an easy marriage. At the time of their courtship N thinks ‘It was foolish to go on having that pain in the pit of my stomach when I was so happy. Nerves of course.’ But we sense that her instinct is sound when she wishes, for a moment, that ‘none of it had happened’ that she was still unattached, ‘going for a walk and whistling’.

***

N longs to be a woman of thirty-six in black satin rather than a gauche young person in home-made jumpers and a sensible brown frock. She repeatedly makes a fool of herself. The passages in which she does so are wonderfully observed pieces of comic writing: we groan as we read of her mortification. Too shy to ask the way around her own new home, she crosses the hall, watched by the imperturbable butler, opens a door with an air of assumed confidence and finds herself in a back room full of stacked up chairs and mackintoshes. She sees a maid examine her vests, and, ashamed of them, orders some fine lace-trimmed underwear, only to cancel the order when the sneering maid is replaced by a less intimidating girl. Yet this abject, rather ridiculous young person has one great power – her imagination.

Rebecca’s narrative is ostensibly realistic. It is full of material details, of buttered crumpets and dog-hairs on the sofa, and handkerchiefs forgotten in mackintosh pockets. Yet a surprisingly large proportion of its narrative consists of scenes N is imagining. In any life, actual events are only a part of experience -- fantasies fuelled by hope and apprehension making up the rest. This novel is one of very few that give those might-have-been experiences their proper place.

When Mrs Van Hopper announces they are leaving Monte Carlo N imagines boarding the train with her, ‘holding her jewel case and her rug, like a maid’. She imagines appealing to Maxim, blurting out ‘I love you so much. I’m terribly unhappy.’ She imagines not doing so, and wasting her last few minutes with him exchanging small talk, ‘my dreadful smile stretching across my face’. Fantasies like these give Rebecca its remarkable emotional density.

They allow comparisons between what is and what might have been. As N and Maxim rise from the table after his brusque proposal she thinks he might take her arm, and ‘smilingly’ tell the waiters, ‘You must congratulate us’. The juxtaposition of that fleeting fantasy with his actual behaviour – abruptly walking out of the room ahead of her, before telling her (telling, not suggesting) that there’ll be no church wedding – is sufficient condemnation of that behaviour.

Above all, the contrasts between young N’s hopes, and the older N’s knowledge of what awaits her, provide a rich seam of dramatic ironies. The first time N and Maxim have tea in the library she imagines their future there. She pictures a period of ‘glorious shabbiness’ when their as-yet-unborn sons sprawl on the sofa in muddy boots. And then she imagines a tranquil old age – she and Maxim, with other dogs, but in the same room, following the same routine of four o’clock tea. (Daphne du Maurier treasured routine – what she called ‘routes’.) This vision of peaceful security is exquisitely poignant because we know -- we have known since the very first sentence -- that it will not be realised. There are reminders, scattered throughout the narrative, of how this story will end – glimpses of hotel rooms devoid of atmosphere, of ‘harsh’ blue Mediterranean skies so different from Cornwall’s lush dampness, of a childless couple isolated abroad.

***

Rebecca is an intensely erotic novel, but its eroticism is of a queasy kind. Daphne du Maurier herself said it was ‘about my feelings of jealousy re my husband and Jan Ricardo,’ Ricardo being an ex-girlfriend of Browning’s. N is jealous from the moment she sees Rebecca’s handwriting. Jealousy is morbid and obsessive. Jealousy drives a person to indulge in shaming, self-tormenting fantasies about the loved one and the other. Jealousy conjures up imaginary rivals. Jealousy infuses even innocent situations with sexual meaning.

During their courtship Maxim hugs N to him in the car but he kisses her only, as one might kiss a child, on the top of her head. She says that their honeymoon was ‘full of gaiety and laughter’, but once back in Manderley the newly-weds sleep in separate beds. When, after confessing to murder, Maxim kisses his wife passionately, we are told he is doing so for the first time. There is a suggestion that -- however often others give N a quick up-and-down to check for signs of pregnancy -- their marriage may not yet have been consummated. For all that, there is a lush sensuality to the life they lead at Manderley.

The charge vibrating through the narrative is almost all displaced from people to inanimate objects: the house, its furnishings, the meals consumed there. The prodigal breakfasts -- the silver chafing-dishes full of sausages and scrambled eggs – and the equally lavish teas are voluptuously suggestive of sensual gratification. Food is sexy. So are flowers. The crimson rhododendrons are terrifyingly carnal: the scent of a crushed azalea petal is a heady intoxicant. And so are clothes, as N’s first visit to Rebecca’s room, with Mrs Danvers as her guide, makes clear.

The only unreserved passion described in Rebecca is that felt by the sinister Mrs Danvers for the beautiful dead young woman who was her charge and her employer. . . . --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Book Description

«Aquesta nit he somiat que tornava a Manderley.» --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

Excellent entertainment . . . du Maurier created a scale by which modern women can measure their feelings. * Stephen King * The DAILY TELEGRAPH * `As a new generation of readers are introduced to the wicked housekeeper Mrs Danvers and learn Maxim de Winter's terrible secret, this chilling, suspenseful tale is as fresh and readable as it was when it was first written, more than 60 years ago.' * I am reminded of how profoundly du Maurier changed the way I felt about myself, how she engaged and excited me with her writing. * Julie Myerson * A brilliantly constructed novel - the ultimate in psychological suspense, instantly gripping and haunting, Rebecca will stay with you for ever. -- Alex Barclay * Psychologies * With one of the most evocative first lines ever, Daphne du Maurier's fifth novel has everything a reader could ask for . . . Psychologically astute and disturbingly romantic, Rebecca was an immediate bestseller on publication in 1938 and has cast a sinister spell ever since * Marie Claire * Possibly the best crime novel ever written. Right from page one you are gripped by a palpable sense of suspense -- Hilary Bonner * Express * Addictive and breathtaking. Its blending of melodrama and subtlety is ingenious. The Cornish setting never quite leaves the imagination * Independent * One of the most influential novels of the twentieth century, Rebecca has woven its way into the fabric of our culture with all the troubling power of myth or dream. A stunning book -- Sarah Waters --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

“One of the most influential novels of the twentieth century, Rebecca has woven its way into the fabric of our culture with all the troubling power of myth or dream.” —Sarah Waters

“Du Maurier is in a class by herself.” —THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Excellent . . . Perfect . . . Mastery from surprise to surprise.” —CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

“Addictive and breathtaking. Its blending of melodrama and subtlety is ingenious. The Cornish setting never quite leaves the imagination.” —THE INDEPENDENT

“This chilling, suspenseful tale is as fresh and readable as it was when it was first written.” —THE DAILY TELEGRAPH --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Publisher

A true classic of suspense in a beautiful new package for a whole new generation of readers. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00CO7FLJM
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Little, Brown and Company (December 17, 2013)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 17, 2013
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2807 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 449 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #17,305 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #31 in Classic Literary Fiction
- #290 in Psychological Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #468 in Classic Literature & Fiction

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Daphne Du Maurier

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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.

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Drwo

The Girl With No Name Writes a Classic

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 25, 2013

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Having read this book many times, I'm hoping a new generation of readers will discover an intriguing mystery without a single vampire, serial killer or one set in some apocalyptic future. Rebecca is dark and strange and almost impossible to put down, especially with the central character dead and the storyteller being a shadow.

The book begins with a dream about a house named Manderley perched on a knoll above the sea. The dream is told by the book's narrator and we learn that she once lived at Manderley but can never return.

The story really begins in a hotel in Monte Carlo in the 1930's where a young girl is the paid companion to a crass, social climbing older woman, Mrs. Van Topper. The older woman will sink to almost any depth to appear well connected and prominent and plants herself in the hotel lobby daily in an attempt to ingratiate herself with someone she deems important. She spots a man she recognizes as a wealthy,prominent Englishman, Maxim de Winter and forces him to have tea with her.

The young girl, whose diary is open to the reader, is horrified by Mrs. Van Topper's obvious attempts to extract personal information from de Winter by giving him the impression that they have friends in common. Although de Winter is not fooled by Mrs. Van Topper, sensing the young girl's anguish, he is kind to her.

The flu confines Mrs. Van Topper to her room, allowing the girl more time and she and de Winter begin to spend most afternoons together, something she records faithfully but does not share with Mrs. Van Topper. The diary records the girl's fascination with the handsome, older man who is often brooding and distant. She falls in love with the enigmatic and dashing de Winter, but realizes how unrealistic she is. The narrator knows that de Winter recently "lost his wife," Rebecca, but knows nothing beyond what Mrs. Van Topper has told her: that de Winter's wife drowned near Manderley and he never speaks of it.

Quite suddenly, Mrs. Van Topper decides to leave Monte Carlo and the girl is ordered to pack and prepare to leave. In a panic, she feels she must seek out Mr. de Winter to say goodbye and when she does, he proposes to her in an awkward way and she accepts. Mrs. Van Topper is angry and points out how unsuited the young girl is to become "mistress of Manderley."

When the girl arrives at Manderley after a rapturous honeymoon, she is awestruck and intimidated by the size of the house and has no idea how to assume her role as Mrs. de Winter. Maxim is off and about the estate seeing to affairs he has neglected and, since the girl is afraid to make errors in social judgment, she leaves all decisions to others, most especially to the head housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, who reinforces the girl's insecurities by continually pointing out the former Mrs. de Winter's beauty, social skills and legions of admirers and friends. The reminders of Rebecca are everywhere; her personalized notecards still in her desk, closets filled with beautiful clothes, fur coats, monogrammed towels and robes with giant R's in script, and the girl becomes convinced that de Winter married her on a whim and remains hopelessly in love with the perfect Rebecca. Rather than learning her role as lady of the house, the girl is terrified that her husband will come to his senses and realize what a mistake he has made and she will lose him. Consequently, she is slow to pay attention to nuances in behavior and speech that would provide clues to what is happening around her.

Manderley is famous for its annual costume ball, a tradition de Winter loathes but agrees to suffer through as it is regarded as the height of the social season. The girl worries about how she will possibly live up to Rebecca's skills as a hostess and has no idea what costume to wear. Mrs. Danvers cleverly suggests a costume to replicate one of the many family portraits of long deceased family members lining the walls of Manderley, failing to disclose that her suggestion is for the girl to wear the exact costume worn by Rebecca at the previous ball.

On the night of the ball, as a drum signals, she descends the grand staircase to be met with silence, expressions of disbelief and gasps of horror. Maxim yells at her and orders her to go and change. She is humiliated and defeated and refuses to go back downstairs. Then she hears voices outside discussing her. "Guess they had a row and she is refusing to come out." "No one has seen her. Rebecca would have been here there and everywhere." Shaken, she suddenly realizes that as Mrs. de Winter, she has certain obligations and one is to overcome her fear and face the music. She makes it through the ball in misery.

The diary is the only information provided, so one never learns the girl's name, nor what she looks like, except for several remarks de Winter makes to her, saying that with a big ribbon in her hair, she would look like Alice in Wonderland Wretched though she is, the girl's despairing self-absorption is shelved by a dramatic event. A ship wrecks close to the shore and divers searching the wreck discover Rebecca's lost sailboat, an event which eventually turns the timid girl into a formidable force.

To reveal more might detract from the reader's experience. Written in another time, the lengths to which certain families went to preserve reputations and hide any unpleasantness may seem absurd. The anxiety felt by the girl, afraid to fail but having no idea how to go about gaining skills she is certain she lacks may seem naive to modern women but, in the end, Rebecca is a book about how imagination clouds the ability to see, or even seek, the truth and how living a lie erodes the soul. It is a story about how fear of the truth stops us from finding joy rather than misery and how what we imagine can be far different from reality. The narrative reveals how behind facades there can be nothing more than a cardboard theater set which has been continually propped up by the flimsiest of supports and if one support post fails, the entire structure collapses.

This psychological melodrama overlays a deeper message.

30 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Her best

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 6, 2023

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I first read this book 50 years ago, and since then have read it in entirety or in parts many, many times. The original movie by Alfred Hitchcock was true to the book; I highly recommend both.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 1, 2023

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Bought a used hardcover and ended up with a beautiful book! It matched the amazing store inside. The imagery found in Rebecca is exquisite! If you enjoy being able to picture every detail as well as a good page turn, read this classic!

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Sydney Williams

"Rebecca," Daphne Du Maurier

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 28, 2020

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Sydney M. Williams

“Rebecca,” Daphne Du Maurier
November 28, 2020

“I can close my eyes now, and look back on it, and see myself as I must have
been, standing on the threshold of the house, a slim awkward figure in my
stockinette dress, clutching in my sticky hands a pair of gauntlet gloves.”
The narrator thinks back on her arrival at Manderley
Rebecca, 1938
Daphne Du Maurier (1907-1989)

Rebecca, among the most famous book titles, opens with one of fiction’s most recognized sentences: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” Two years after publication, Alfred Hitchcock directed the Academy Award film starring Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier. In 2020, Ben Wheatley directed a new version, with Lily James and Arnie Hammer. While Hitchcock does a better job in portraying the dark mood of the story, neither, in my opinion, captures the novel’s full range.

Daphne Du Maurier wrote historical novels. She was a master of creating an atmosphere of dark moods and mysterious characters. Born in London, she spent much of her life in Cornwall. Novels like Jamaica Inn, Frenchman’s Creek, The King’s General and My Cousin Rachel were set in England’s west country. Manderley, Max de Winter’s home, is a large estate on the rocky coast of Cornwall; the time is the 1920s.

The story is told through a narrator, whose name we are never told, though Max de Winter tells her, “You have a very lovely and unusual name.” When we meet her, she is a paid companion to a wealthy, overbearing American, Mrs. Van Hopper – “…her short body ill-balanced upon tottering high heels, her fussy, frilly blouse a complement to her large bosom and swinging hips…”. They are staying in Monte Carlo in late winter. While the narrator is never described, we are led to understand she is English, about twenty years old, comely not beautiful, innocent not worldly – the antithesis of Rebecca, which is what attracts Mr. de Winter. He is a widower; his wife Rebecca having died the previous May. He is “tall and slim, with dark hair,” wealthy, aristocratic, in his early forties.

The dead Rebecca hovers over the novel, like a dark cloud. She obsesses the narrator who has become the new Mrs. De Winter. Rebecca was tall, clever, fond of sport, “a very lovely creature…full of life.” Mrs. Danvers, formerly her childhood nurse, is now housekeeper at Manderley. We first meet her through the eyes of the narrator: “Someone advanced through the sea of faces, someone tall and gaunt, dressed in deep black, whose prominent cheek-bones and great hollow eyes gave her a skull’s face, parchment-white, set on a skeleton’s frame.” The ghost of Rebecca, a deceitful phantasm, hovers over the large, isolated estate, made real through the devious intrigues of Mrs. Danvers.

Neither movie ends as does the book. Movies are a visual, but passive, art form, where the eye works and the mind can nap. Books require concentration and are most effective when the reader employs his or her imagination, guided by the author. Rebecca’s last sentence, as Max and the narrator drive home to Manderley: “And the ashes blew toward us with the salt wind from the sea.” Not the end a movie requires, but perfect for this story; you will be captivated by Ms. Du Maurier’s creative genius. I will say no more.

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Top reviews from other countries

Nesscafé

Multiple times reading this fabulous book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 4, 2018

Verified Purchase

Rebecca is my all-time favourite novel. It doesn't get any better than this gothic tale, famously set at Manderley. The suspense du Maurier builds is incredible. I had seen the Hitchcock film and I just loved this so much more, not just because the characters are so much more detailed (obviously) but because the ending is different and SO much better in the book. I felt very differently about both characters at the finish. The whole thing is very Jane Eyre but even more thrillingly dark. It says something that I didn't realise I didn't know the name of the lead character and yet she is spoken to directly by everyone in the book. I've read it and re-read it, seen the play and watched the film. The best thing to do is read it.

41 people found this helpful

Evi

Amazing cover, brilliant book!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 24, 2018

Verified Purchase

One of the best books I’ve had the pleasure of reading this year. This was an absolute joy and I’m so glad I got this copy. So beautiful and classic. Definitely will be reading more books by Du Maurier

33 people found this helpful

Michelle

Amazing, this will be an all time favourite for me.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 31, 2020

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'A lovely woman isn't like a motor tyre, she doesn't wear out. The more you use her, the better she runs'.

I went into this book totally blind, I had no idea of the genre or knew anything about it but after a friend absolutely loved it I couldn't wait to jump on the bandwagon, especially with the new adaptation being released.

Firstly I can only describe the prose as the language of a traditional afternoon tea. Its is so beautiful, the sentence structure flows and all I wanted to do was eat cucumber sandwiches and scones while staring at a view of rolling fields while reading.

Secondly these characters were everything. I really enjoyed Maxim, every now and again his humour arose and it reminded me so much of Lord Henry in Dorien Gray. And Beatrice was an absolute scream, I loved her voice in my head. And our protagonist, nameless from start to finish, now I've finished the book I can only describe her as the coldest character in the warmest way.

I did not expect OMG and WOW moments in this book but the turns this book took almost gave me whiplash. I do recommend reading the first two chapters again once you've finished the book as that does give it a sense of closure that felt missing when I read the last page.

I will read more from this author, everything was so vivid, the characters all had their own voices and I think this is one closing scene that literally took my breath away. I felt I was there, I could see what they saw and I felt pure traumatic calmness wash over me.

9 people found this helpful

Sarah Gordon

Haunting and Beautiful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 11, 2019

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I avoided reading this for years because I thought it would be just another love story. I started reading it by accident because I’d downloaded a sample on to my kindle and thought I was reading something else. By the time I had finished the first three chapters I was completely absorbed and couldn’t rest until I gd purchased the full novel and then didn’t put it down for two days until it was finished. A love story, yes, but so much more besides.

19 people found this helpful

musicmaker

Not convinced

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 30, 2020

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Even as a teenager I found it difficult to accept that a rich handsome sophisticated man would fall for the drab anonymous heroine of this book. I find it even more so on a re-reading. The author endows her with no attractive qualities whatsoever. Absolutely fine to make her young and gauche, but at least give her one redeeming feature. The faux naivete of, say, the heroine of I Capture the Castle. I will grant that Mrs Danvers is a good character, likewise Maxim's sister, and as ever with this author there is plenty of atmosphere and a strong sense of place. Rebecca herself, however, never steps out of the shadows, and the big surprise at the end falls sadly flat, being no more than a prosaic statement rather than a startling discovery, while the final extra twist needed to excuse what happened remains just that: an excuse. You get the feeling the author was rummaging in her mind for some plausible way of turning the unacceptable into the acceptabl; but we have no idea whether Rebecca was indeed the appalling creature she is said to have been, since it is all hearsay; and even if she was ...

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