I’m sure I’ve mentioned it here before, but Daphne DuMaurier is one of my favorite authors. In spite of this fact, I have not read all her books. This is one of the most recent ones I’ve read.
Frenchman’s Creek takes place during the reign of King Charles II. Dona, Lady of St. Columb and some level of aristocrat, leaves London in a fit of disgust with the society of the time. She retreats to her husband’s country estate in Cornwall, which hasn’t been used in several years. She quickly discovers that it’s being used as a base by the French pirate Jean-Benoit Aubéry, who has a notorious reputation and has been terrorizing the coast near by. She meets him and they begin a love affair.
Dressed as a boy, Dona joins the pirate crew and takes part in one particularly spectacular robbery, which brings her husband and his friend Rockingham to Cornwall. With other men, they plot to capture Aubéry, but Aubéry and his clever crew get the best of the search party – tying them up and robbing them.
I don’t remember exactly what happens but Dona has to kill Rockingham because he attacks her in a jealous rage when he figures out she’s in love with Aubéry. Naturally, Rockingham had his sights on Dona as well, and was a lunatic. Aubéry is eventually captured, but Dona helps him escape, and while she’s tempted to go with him on his ship so they can travel and have adventures together, she ultimately chooses to stay with her children and her husband.
This isn’t du Maurier’s usual style of novel – it’s much more romantic than the other works I’ve read by her, and it wasn’t as dark as other stories, with no horror elements. I did not have an issue with this. du Maurier’s language was as beautiful as ever, and the story was fun.
There an be an argument made that this book was semi-autobiographical. du Maurier struggled with identity during her life. As a girl she wished to be a boy and was a fierce tomboy. She described her sexuality as that of two people – a loving wife and mother, the persona she showed the world, and “a lover” which was she described as an overwhelmingly masculine energy. “The lover” was the force behind her creative work. There was also speculation that she was bisexual (but this is just speculation and has been denied by her children/surviving family). She is also remembered as something as a recluse who got tired of the aristocratic society she belonged to and the general public, but this depends on who you talked to.
With that in mind, it’s possible to see that struggle play out in this work. Dona becomes disgusted with her life and takes a break from it and joins a pirate crew dressed as a boy, while also engaging in a passionate fling with the captain. She is tempted to leave, but ultimately decides that her place is with her husband and children (much like du Maurier stayed with her husband and children, despite that her marriage wasn’t entirely happy.)
I really loved this story for the language, though. It’s an almost dreamy love story with a bit of adventure. It’s quite enjoyable and much more lighthearted than her usual stories, which both shows her depth as an author to jump into almost a different genre of work entirely. It’s not my favorite of her works (I think Rebecca will always be my favorite), but it was good work and I highly recommend it.
Tag Archives: genre: romance
Frenchman’s Creek
Last Words From Montmartre
I saw Qiu Miaojin’s Last Words From Montmartre at the Strand Bookstore down in the city on one of their tables. I think it was pre-owned because it was super cheap ($6-ish) and I bought it because the back read like it was going to be an exciting psychological thriller.
This book also satisfied a requirement on the list I lost last year, but I really thought it was going to be super exciting from the blurb on the back cover:
When the pioneering Taiwanese novelist Qiu Miaojin committed suicide in 1995 at age twenty-six, she left behind her unpublished masterpiece, Last Words from Montmartre. Unfolding through a series of letters written by an unnamed narrator, Last Words tells the story of a passionate relationship between two young women—their sexual awakening, their gradual breakup, and the devastating aftermath of their broken love. In a style that veers between extremes, from self-deprecation to pathos, compulsive repetition to rhapsodic musings, reticence to vulnerability, Qiu’s genre-bending novel is at once a psychological thriller, a sublime romance, and the author’s own suicide note.
The letters (which, Qiu tells us, can be read in any order) leap between Paris, Taipei, and Tokyo. They display wrenching insights into what it means to live between cultures, languages, and genders—until the genderless character Zoë appears, and the narrator’s spiritual and physical identity is transformed. As powerfully raw and transcendent as Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask, Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Theresa Cha’s Dictée, to name but a few, Last Words from Montmartre proves Qiu Miaojin to be one of the finest experimentalists and modernist Chinese-language writers of our generation.
It wasn’t sublime. It wasn’t thrilling. It was 176 pages of a woman feeling sorry for herself and being pathetic. I hated it.
I was excited about all aspects of it – a genre and gender bending queer romantic thriller taking place in far away, exotic cities? Am I tall enough to get on the ride? Sign me up.
And when I got off the ride, I got the distinct impression that I was misled on purpose. I found the unnamed narrator (another aspect of the story I liked, as it was reminiscent of Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca, another romantic thriller with an unnamed narrator) whiny, self-indulgent, and as I said earlier, pathetic.
Maybe it’s because of who I am personally, but I have never liked self-pitying wallowers. I understand being depressed after a passionate relationship ends. Eventually, though, pull it together and get over it. Go on living. I always respected myself too much to let my relationship to a significant other define me. I never gave him that kind of power and I have trouble respecting women who do give their significant others, male of female, that kind of power. The relationship in the story, from what I remember now, wasn’t an abusive relationship of any kind, so it’s not that kind of inequality that would trigger someone being unable to leave or be truly damaged by abusive behavior. It was just some woman who couldn’t/wouldn’t get over a breakup.
I had no problem with the translation. Ari Larissa Heinrich did a great job. I can’t comment on the original language, but I thought it was beautifully written and therefore must have been beautifully translated.
My distinct reaction of dislike may be a defect of me personally because a lot of people love this book and comment endlessly on the genius of the author. She has other projects people rave about (though I have no inclination to discover them). Qiu Miaojin committed suicide, which, although I loathe admitting it, darkly fascinates me and is one of the reasons I thought this book would be good. It can be read as her suicide note? What does that mean? How interesting! Let’s find out.
I FOUND OUT. I HATED IT. I WAS GLAD THE NARRATOR WAS SETTING OFF TO KILL HERSELF.
Obviously I feel bad about the author because she was a real person, but the narrator? Nah.
This isn’t the first “great book” where my reaction was one of intense dislike to what I considered to be a whiny, pathetic narrator. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley really rubbed me the wrong way too, and I was only a 16 year old high school sophomore when I read that. But it was the same kind of thing. The narrator went on ENDLESSLY, wallowing in self-indulgent nonsense and oooooh poor him.
I can’t remember for sure 13 years later but I think that narrator commits suicide at the end too and I think my reaction was the same. “Good riddance.”
I would be more specific and look up more details of this book for this post, but I gave it to a friend and she never gave it back, which was fine. I haven’t asked for it back. I don’t want it back. It was $6ish, 176 pages, and 3 or 4 hours I’ll never get back.
It was disappointing enough without remembering all the specific details.
words in scarlet ink 