Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier: Book Review

I've been meaning to read this book for years, and I'm so glad I finally did. It was not at all what I expected, but then, I really don't know what I expected. It's the story of a young, naive woman who meets a dark, handsome, and mysterious stranger while on holiday in Monte Carlo. She becomes infatuated with him, and in a sudden, surprising moment, he asks her to marry him. She does, of course, and is soon whisked away to the infamous Manderley, his huge, gorgeous mansion of a home. But the house has two inhabitants who are not as thrilled with the fact that the master has brought home a new bride--the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, and the now-dead, former lady of the house, Rebecca.

I loved the dark, gothic feel--the mystery of it--throughout. However, I kept expecting there to be more of the "ghost story;" I guess I kept expecting the narrator to actually see the ghost of Rebecca somewhere in the house. It took me reading half-way through the book before I realized I did not actually know the narrator's name. I thought that was ingenious. It fit perfectly with her persistent feelings of being nothing, nobody, completely insignificant. Speaking of which, that part did annoy me. I really had very little respect for her because she obviously had zero respect for herself. I was cheered toward the end, when she said she'd finally broken free of Rebecca's and Mrs. Danvers's power over her. I was disappointed that the story ended soon after that and the reader was never able to actually see her as a new creature, reborn, and no long self-loathing and insecure. I also felt an undercurrent of lesbianism in the relationship between Rebecca and Mrs. Danvers. Theirs was certainly not a "normal" relationship; I felt that both women were somewhat mentally unstable. The narrator's tendency to daydream about what she expected to happen in each and every situation became tiresome, but I did love the detail with which she experienced and described everything.

This story was certainly reminiscent of Wuthering Heights and the like. I enjoyed it, 4 stars.

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Read about the author, Daphne du Maurier, on Goodreads.com.