Rebecca (Longman Fiction)

Rebecca (Longman Simplified English Series) / [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 (...)!
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“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.

[About the Author]: Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989) has been called one of the great shapers of popular culture and the modern imagination. Among her more famous works are Jamaica Inn, The Scapegoat, Rebecca, and the short story "The Birds," all of which were subsequently made into films, the latter two directed by Alfred Hitchcock. She lived for many years in Cornwall, England, and in 1969 became Dame Daphne du Maurier.

Aventura / Crime / Drama / Fantasia / Ficção / Literatura Estrangeira / Romance / Suspense e Mistério