Rating: 5 out of 5

I’d been meaning to read a du Maurier for a while but hadn’t got around to it. When I was looking for a book to read the other day I discovered that several had been released in kindle format. I initially was going to miss Rebecca as I’d seen the Hitchcock film a few years ago but decided to at least try the sample as see how I got on. I don’t have the greatest memory for the details of films and so, although I had a vague recollection and idea of the direction we were heading, I read and enjoyed and followed the twists and turns with delight. A well written engaging tale.

Highlighted passages:

Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.

I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say.

I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth.

Why did dogs make one want to cry? There was something so quiet and hopeless about their sympathy.

Manderley, is the dominant presence. Although never precisely located (the word ‘Cornwall’ is never actually used in the novel), its minutely detailed setting is clearly that of an actual house, Menabilly. Du Maurier discovered Menabilly, on its isolated headland near Fowey,

The second wife, the drab shadowy creature who narrates this story, remains nameless. We learn that she has a ‘lovely and unusual’ name, and that it was her father who gave it her. The only other identity she has, was also bestowed by a man - she is a wife, she is Mrs de Winter.

Hitchcock, when he came to film the novel two years later, ran a mile from this scenario, which he knew would be unacceptable. In his version, there is no murder, and Maxim’s crime is at worst manslaughter since, during a quarrel, Rebecca falls, and (conveniently and mortally) injures herself.

Originally posted to my Goodreads account