Like American Gods and Neverwhere, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca was a book I’d read a decade before. Earlier, actually.

The first time I read Rebecca was for English class as a summer reading book going into high school, so I was 14 at the time. My mom convinced me to read it because there was an Alfred Hitchcock film to accompany it, starring Joan Fontaine, and I loved Hitch. Still do. Anyway, I watched the movie, then read the book.

Hitchcock’s ability to stay true to the source material in the film was pretty phenomenal. The source material is also something I came to know and love in time.

It opens, “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

We meet the never named narrator, who is in her early twenties with no family, working as a traveling companion for the insufferable Mrs. VanHopper in Monte Carlo. While Mrs. VanHopper recovers from the flu, the narrator meets and (much to her surprise) is courted by George Fortescue Maximilian ‘Maxim’ de Winter, a wealthy English widower. He is somewhat older than her, at 42, but he enjoys her company so much in Monte Carlo that he asks her to marry him and after the trip they return to his English country estate, Manderley.

At Manderley we meet the staff and Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper, who was quite devoted to Maxim’s first wife, Rebecca. Rebecca seems to have been perfect in every way. The second Mrs. de Winter (again, we never learn her first name and she is only ever referred to as Mrs. de Winter, the second Mrs. de Winter, or a pet name by Maxim) is haunted by Rebecca, as nobody has ever done anything to change the habits she had in the house when she was alive. She was adored by neighbors, friends, and society. The narrator becomes more and more convinced her husband is still pining for Rebecca.

As the narrator matures and her antagonistic relationship with the devoted Mrs. Danvers boils over, she slowly uncovers the true nature of her relationship with her husband, his relationship with Rebecca, and learns all about Rebecca herself.

Rebecca is described as a romantic suspense novel but it isn’t romantic the way we think of romance novels. It’s more of a Gothic novel, so don’t let the romantic part turn you off.

I’ve read a number of du Maurier’s books and short stories now, and while I haven’t read all of them, I would say it’s safe to assume that Rebecca is du Maurier at her best, the pinnacle of all that is enchanting about her work: the atmosphere, the secrets, the suspense, the dual nature of the characters’ reality. It’s a page turner in its own dark, brooding way.

This was a revisited book, but I’ve seen the movie 100 times because I love it. I hadn’t read the whole book in awhile, although I had gone back to look at pieces of it here and there, and enjoyed it again, tremendously. Rebecca remains one of my favorite books of all time.

Tagged: authors: daphne dumaurier, books gone hollywood, books: rebecca