Review: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

So, how many times have you read Rebecca? Once, twice or no longer remember the numbers like me!! What!!! You have never read it!!!!! If there is one book that one has to read, this is the one. First published in April 1938, (it has never been out of print) it still remains an amazing and “current” read today, which grabs you one of the most famous and memorable sentences ever written.

The padlocked gate opens and you follow the long drive when you suddenly – Manderley……..a silent and dark house filled with secrets…

I came upon it suddenly; the approach masked by the unnatural growth of a vast shrub that spread in all directions . . . There was Manderley, our Manderley, secretive and silent as it had always been, the gray stone shining in the moonlight of my dream, the mullioned windows reflecting the green lawns and terrace. Time could not wreck the perfect symmetry of those walls, nor the site itself, a jewel in the hollow of a hand.

A young woman working as a rich woman’s companion meets a mature and rich Englishman in Monte Carlo.

She agrees to marry him after a quick courtship and he then takes her to his home, Manderley, where the presence of his dead wife, Rebecca, still lives and kept alive by the evil and manipulative housekeeper, Mrs Danvers.

You wouldn't think she'd been gone so long, would you? Sometimes, when I walk along the corridor, I fancy I hear her just behind me. That quick light step, I couldn't mistake it anywhere. It's not only in this room, it's in all the rooms in the house. I can almost hear it now. Do you think the dead come back and watch the living?

“Why don't you go? Why don't you leave Manderley? He doesn't need you... he's got his memories. He doesn't love you, he wants to be alone again with her. You've nothing to stay for. You've nothing to live for really, have you?”

Why don't you go? We none of us want you. He doesn't want you, he never did. He can't forget her. He wants to be alone in the house again, with her. It's you that ought to be lying there in the church crypt, not her. It's you who ought to be dead, not Mrs. de Winter.

Mrs Danvers is an unforgettable villainess….she glides down the passages, silently and malevolently

Mrs. Danvers to the present Mrs de Winter….” Go ahead. Jump. He never loved you, so why go on living? Jump and it will all be over...”

Brilliant writing, a story of romance, suspense, guilt, secrets,

Her shadow between us all the time. Her damned shadow keeping us from one another. How could I hold you like this, my darling, my little love, with the fear always in my heart that this would happen? I remembered her eyes as she looked at me before she died. I remembered that slow treacherous smile. She knew this would happen even then. She knew she would win in the end.

loss of innocence

I can't forget what it has done to you. I was looking at you, thinking of nothing else all through lunch. It's gone forever, that funny, young, lost look that I loved. It won't come back again. I killed that too, when I told you about Rebecca. It's gone, in twenty-four hours. You are so much older...

My favorite quote in this book, which has stayed with me since I first read this book many years ago is

If you haven’t read Rebecca, I urge you to start page 1 right now. It will stay with you forever!!!


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