Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

One of the good things about belonging to a book group is that, if run democratically, you will often find yourself reading books you would not have chosen for one reason of many reasons.  So with Rebecca which had slipped past me at various points in my reading life when I might have stumbled upon it.  For example at the time that we were taking annual holidays in Cornwall I found a copy of Vanishing Cornwall in a local bookshop and found it both informative and engagingly written: readable but writing of a very high calibre.  This was my first literary encounter with du Maurier.  I subsequently read The House on the Strand (written more than thirty years after Rebecca)which is a compelling read:

Wiki:  "Like many of du Maurier's novels, The House on the Strand has a supernatural element, exploring the ability to mentally travel back in time and experience historical events at first hand - but not to influence them. It has been called a Gothic tale, influenced by writers as diverse as Robert Louis Stevenson, Dante, and the psychologist Carl Jung, in which a sinister potion enables the central character to escape the constraints of his dreary married life by travelling back through time. The narrator agrees to test a drug that transports him back to 14th century Cornwall and becomes absorbed in the lives of people he meets there, to the extent that the two worlds he is living in start to merge. "

And then I found another title in second hand, A Cornish Childhood, by A L Rowse and then I moved on.

And now thanks to the Val de Saire book club I have met Rebecca.

Rebecca is a thriller novel by English author Dame Daphne du Maurier. A best-seller, Rebecca sold 2,829,313 copies between its publication in 1938 and 1965, and the book has never gone out of print. The novel is remembered especially^[1] for the character Mrs Danvers, the fictional estate Manderley, and its opening line:

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

— The second Mrs de Winter

Literary technique

The famous opening line of the book "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." is an iambic hexameter. The last line of the book "And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea" is also in metrical form; almost but not quite an anapestic tetrameter.

What I thought:

A novel that has never been out of print and sold nearly 3 million copies in the 30 year interval after its publication.  In 2017, it was voted the UK's favourite book of the past 225 years in a poll by bookseller W H Smith!!!

For me it started as a slow-burner of a novel. Mrs Van Hopper and her companion are staying at a hotel in Monte Carlo. Both these characters made me squirm a bit, Mrs Van Hopper’s shameless pushiness and the younger woman’s reticence and self-effacing manner. These are the opening chapters and then with the marriage of the young woman and Max de Winter the narrative takes off. Our ‘heroine’ was led like a lamb to slaughter. Du Maurier cleverly drew the creepily manipulative and poisonous Mrs Danvers well and the new young wife’s fearfulness and blind innocence at times made me want to shake the book at her! It was hard to feel sorry for her you just wanted her to show some mettle. She does finally gain confidence and become more assertive when Mrs Danvers is humbled. It was hard to warm to any of the characters except the man on the beach who refused to give up his secrets even though it was for fear of being locked into an asylum. 

Gradually the novel shifts from a psychological drama about obsession to a thriller: will the killer be unmasked and brought to justice. I thought this plot was cleverly written and at just the right pace. The twists with regard to Rebecca’s visit to the gynecologist and her confrontation with Max in the boat hut were clever. I did guess that Rebecca’s shooting was something which she engineered. 

A great ending to the book, rightly famous in the world of literature.

Two further comments: As the story reaches its climax I found myself wanting Max to ‘get away with it’. This sometimes happens when I read a book and a character is so obviously guilty but the author has contrived to make you engage with the guilty one. I think that is skillful writing because the author has manipulated her reader. Secondly it never occurred to me until I came to write this review that the second Mrs de Winter is never named. I went to the opening chapters to check what it was, assuming I had forgotten it, only to find we are never told. I wonder what prompted du Maurier to use that device? Perhaps it was to emphasize her identity as the second Mrs de Winter rather than a person in her own right and perhaps also to subordinate her to Rebecca whose ‘presence’ is constant and who is mentioned so often in the text."

The Essex Serpent

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

Waterstones Book of the Year 2016

Sunday Times number one bestseller

Shortlisted for Costa Book Award

iTunes Book of the Year 2016

Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas prize 2017

Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize 2017

Longlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize 2017

Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2017

Shortlisted for the Independent Bookshop Week Book Award 2017

British Book Awards Book of the Year 2017 (Fiction and Overall)

What Amazon says:

An exquisitely talented young British author makes her American debut with this rapturously acclaimed historical novel, set in late nineteenth-century England, about an intellectually minded young widow, a pious vicar, and a rumored mythical serpent that explores questions about science and religion, skepticism, and faith, independence and love.

When Cora Seaborne’s brilliant, domineering husband dies, she steps into her new life as a widow with as much relief as sadness: her marriage was not a happy one. Wed at nineteen, this woman of exceptional intelligence and curiosity was ill-suited for the role of society wife. Seeking refuge in fresh air and open space in the wake of the funeral, Cora leaves London for a visit to coastal Essex, accompanied by her inquisitive and obsessive eleven-year old son, Francis, and the boy’s nanny, Martha, her fiercely protective friend.

While admiring the sites, Cora learns of an intriguing rumor that has arisen further up the estuary, of a fearsome creature said to roam the marshes claiming human lives. After nearly 300 years, the mythical Essex Serpent is said to have returned, taking the life of a young man on New Year’s Eve. A keen amateur naturalist with no patience for religion or superstition, Cora is immediately enthralled, and certain that what the local people think is a magical sea beast may be a previously undiscovered species. Eager to investigate, she is introduced to local vicar William Ransome. Will, too, is suspicious of the rumors. But unlike Cora, this man of faith is convinced the rumors are caused by moral panic, a flight from true belief.

These seeming opposites who agree on nothing soon find themselves inexorably drawn together and torn apart—an intense relationship that will change both of their lives in ways entirely unexpected.

Hailed by Sarah Waters as "a work of great intelligence and charm, by a hugely talented author," The Essex Serpent is "irresistible . . . you can feel the influences of Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, and Hilary Mantel channeled by Perry in some sort of Victorian séance. This is the best new novel I’ve read in years" (Daily Telegraph).

What I thought:
This is my kind of book, before I even comment on the text it is for me a Pandora's Box of mysterious and murky things, of marvels of nature: mosses, fungi, serpents, parasites, tapeworms, fossils, toadstones, amber, blue seaglass and my personal favourites blue wing feathers of Jay and, of course, Leviathan and then a lexicon of brooding terminology:  decay, putrescence, blackness, miasma, mud, tuberculosis and then there are the things that go wrong, the sheep that is stuck on the saltings, the child that is lost, the young man who is stabbed, Luke's loss of manual dexterity even the jam which does not set. There is much that is strange. I try to find some sense of joy in the pages of Perry's book but even the intimate scenes between the characters are recounted in a gladless style.  What is to like then?  Firstly there is such texture in the narrative, in all those objects both natural and artefactual which are referred to time and again.  Visually appealing, curious and also tactile.  And the settings, the east end of London and the flat coastal landscape of Essex where the land grades into the sea over extensive saltmarshes.  I know saltings well and enjoy walking by them, they have an idiosyncratic fauna and flora and are 'dangerous' to encroach on. Made all the more treacherous by the tides - my familiars as they reveal and then hide their natural curiosities in an endless cycle of highs and lows.

And as for the writing even before I read Sarah Perry's Wikipedia profile I knew that I was in the presence of a writer who is very comfortable in Gothic style and a probably a Victorian born out of her time. She says as much on her own profile page, by inclination and upbringing. She has a PhD in creative writing from Royal Holloway University where her supervisor was Sir Andrew Motion. Her doctoral thesis was on the Gothic in the writing of Iris Murdoch. There are several relationships between the characters in the book and they are all uneasy, that between Will and Cora, drawn together by mutual attraction yet differing profoundly in their spiritual beliefs and always the figure of Stella between a symbol of potential guilt. And Cora herself, a contrary and manipulative woman I found her to be, what did others think?. I could write an essay on her alone...... And finally the book is themed by the serpent who threads its way through the book, the ancient legend, the carving on the end of a pew, the optical illusions of some of the characters, the beached corpse, a medical symbol and always the serpent of original sin, temptation. So this was very much a book for me, and thank you for choosing it.

Postscript - all the way through I found myself wondering just what the serpent would prove to be.  When it transpired to be a 20 foot fish with a single fin running along its dorsum I looked up conger eel and moray eel but even the maximum size for the latter would not work for the giant of Perry's imagining.  In the end I found an answer, the oarfish:

This is what I believe the rotting sea serpent to be:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=oarfish&client=safari&hl=en-gb&prmd=ivn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjntbGpkNfZAhUmCcAKHcvbBxoQ_AUIECgB&biw=1024&bih=672

The Remains of the Day

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

About the Author (from Wiki)

Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan on 8 November 1954, the son of Shizuo Ishiguro, a physical oceanographer, and his wife Shizuko. At the age of 5, Ishiguro and his family (including his two sisters) left Japan and moved to Guildford, Surrey, as his father was invited for research at the National Institute of Oceanography. He did not return to visit Japan until 1989, nearly 30 years later, as a participant in the Japan Foundation Short-Term visitors Program. In an interview with Kenzaburō Ōe, Ishiguro stated that the Japanese settings of his first two novels were imaginary: "I grew up with a very strong image in my head of this other country, a very important other country to which I had a strong emotional tie ... In England I was all the time building up this picture in my head, an imaginary Japan."^[

He attended Stoughton Primary School and then Woking County Grammar School in Surrey. After finishing school, he took a gap year and travelled through the United States and Canada, while writing a journal and sending demo tapes to record companies. In 1974, he began studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury, graduating in 1978 with a Bachelor of Arts (honours) in English and Philosophy. After spending a year writing fiction, he resumed his studies at the University of East Anglia where he studied with Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter, and gained a Master of Arts in Creative Writing in 1980. His thesis became his first novel, A Pale View of Hills, published in 1982. He became a British citizen in 1983.

Review from The Guardian, I cannot improve on this for an insightful analysis of what the book is about:

Some of my friends and family might roll their eyes if they see this – they’ve heard my spiel about The Remains of the Day too many times. Some have already had a copy thrust upon them as a gift. Over the years since I read it, I’ve turned into a Remains of the Day evangelist. It’s not my fault. Kazuo Ishiguro’s subtle masterpiece about the private agonies of an ageing butler is hardly unknown – it won the 1989 Booker prize, after all – but sometimes you find a piece of writing so well executed, so moving and so perceptive about the lives many of us lead that you can’t help praising it to anyone not quick-witted enough to look busy.

A lack of restraint is perhaps the best response to Ishiguro’s novel, which is the tale of a man so burdened by propriety that he lets the love of his life slip through his fingers. Mr Stevens is chief of staff at an English stately home; as the novel opens, in the summer of 1956, he is set to undertake a motoring trip to visit Miss Kenton, a housekeeper who left 20 years earlier to get married. The butler says he wants to ask her if she’d consider returning to work: “Miss Kenton, with her great affection for this house, with her exemplary professionalism, was just the factor needed to enable me to complete a fully satisfactory staff plan for Darlington Hall.” But Stevens isn’t fooling anyone, especially when he lets slip that a letter (“her first in seven years, discounting Christmas cards”) contains hints her marriage is falling apart.

 Unreliable narrators – those mysterious figures the reader must try to work out – are ten a penny in fiction. Ishiguro, instead, likes to give us unwitting narrators: speakers who remain trapped in self-preserving fictions, mysteries even to themselves. Bit by bit, you learn to look for the real emotions running beneath the buffed surface of the prose. Stevens reminisces grandly about his former employer, Lord Darlington, an aristocrat who aligned himself with the Nazis and eventually died in disgrace. He sifts through memories of his father – a butler himself, who was aloof to the point of abuse – and holds forth about “dignity”, a concocted ideal that has to do “with a butler’s ability not to abandon the professional being he inhabits”.  

Each journal entry becomes a mannered exercise in avoidance and projection. When Stevens reaches a sensitive subject – such as whether Miss Kenton was driven away by his refusal to admit his feelings for her – he veers off into self-protective prattling, carrying on for pages before he feels able to continue. “All in all,” he writes tellingly, “I cannot see why the option of her returning to Darlington Hall and seeing out her working years there should not offer a very genuine consolation to a life that has come to be so dominated by a sense of waste.”

We get a picture of a man trying desperately to keep a lid on his emotions – and what a complete picture it is. The Remains of the Day does that most wonderful thing a work of literature can do: it makes you feel you hold a human life in your hands. When you reach the end, it really does seem as if you’ve lost a friend – a laughably pompous, party-hat-refusing, stick-in-the-mud friend, but a good friend nonetheless. You want to give him a hug, except he’d be outraged.

The Remains of the Day is a book about a thwarted life. It’s about how class conditioning can turn you into your own worst enemy, making you complicit in your own subservience. It’s probably quite an English book – I can’t imagine readers in more gregarious nations will have much patience with a protagonist who takes four decades to fail to declare his feelings. “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way,” as Pink Floyd sang. It’s a book for anyone who feels they’ve ever held themselves back when something that truly mattered was within their grasp.

Most of all, though, it’s a book about love. Stevens is forced to let go of his illusions about Lord Darlington, his filial pride, his cherished “dignity”, until all that remains is Miss Kenton and what might have been. The story reaches its low-key climax in the quiet surroundings of a Cornish tea-room. I won’t spoil it for you, except to say that, here as elsewhere, what is not said makes all the difference.

I once heard that, to make the reader cry, a writer should try to keep the characters dry-eyed. There are some tears in this novel – yet perhaps not enough, because the tale of the steadfast, hopelessly mistaken Stevens gets me every time. If you haven’t read The Remains of the Day, I hope you’ll let me park my professional dignity and beg you to get hold of a copy pronto. And if you’ve read it and loved it, then – whatever you do – don’t keep your feelings to yourself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Remains_of_the_Day