Breakaway Books

Authored by Daphne du Maurier; Published 1938; Thriller

⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️🏖️

Some novels remind you that as much as things have changed in the past century, much has stayed the same. Rebecca is one of those novels, managing to evoke the same tension as a modern psychological thriller.

In Rebecca, the narrator is on an extended stay in Monte Carlo with her employer, a middle-aged woman who has hired her as a companion. There she meets the widower Max DeWinter, who courts and proposes to her over the course of just a few weeks. The narrator accepts and is plunged into an entirely different world, where she is the mistress of his estate, Manderley. Once she arrives, she discovers that the shadow of Max’s first wife, Rebecca, is everywhere, and particularly haunts the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers. It quickly becomes clear that Rebecca was a glamorous lady… and that not everything about her death is as it seems.

This novel was a little jarring to me at first–it’s not structured like modern novels. I couldn’t quite understand why the author lingered so long in the first section, when Mr. DeWinter meets his future bride and they undertake an abbreviated courtship. It has a different feeling from the rest of the novel, with only the slightest hint of foreshadowing. It’s hard not to think that in a modern rendition, this section would have been reduced to only a few pages. However, once we arrive at Manderley, the tension builds rapidly. I kept thinking to myself that the narrator would drive herself completely mad with her obsessive thoughts about Rebecca, her constant comparisons and anxieties about how she measures up. It was the rendering of the narrator’s anxiety that felt the most real, the repeated waking nightmares of all the ways that things could go wrong.

But did I enjoy spending time with these characters? I can’t say I did. Putting aside the narrator’s persistent anxieties about measuring up to her husband’s first wife, I was endlessly frustrated by her inability to stand up for herself. I understand that she’s a young woman, but the amount of deference she shows to just about everyone around her at her own expense is maddening. I practically stood up and cheered when she finally asserted herself to Mrs. Danvers. Yet, perhaps her insecurities could have been alleviated if her husband had been even the tiniest bit supportive. He is endlessly dismissive of her concerns and seems to have the emotional intelligence of a peapod. I could not understand what was going on inside his mind, and the way he condescended to the narrator was infuriating.

Rebecca is the perfect novel to pick up if you want a more classical vibe while maintaining the edge-of-your-seat tension of modern thrillers.