strange and random happenstance

The 1996-1997 season of Masterpiece Theatre was rare for me in that I caught it entirely. I was taking a year off before college and therefore had time to indulge in my much loved passions of reading and watching miniseries while freaking out about my future. The adaptation of Nostromo starring Colin Firth and A Royal Scandal starring Richard E. Grant were highlights that year. But what I wasn't looking forward to was the season ending remake of Rebecca. This was at the height of my Hitchcock fanaticism and I couldn't comprehend why anyone would remake a classic. Yes, Hitchcock didn't get it 100% right, but you can not deny that Laurence Olivier IS Maxim de Winter. It won best picture at the Oscars! So I planned to boycott the remake. The problem when living with your parents is that they have their own opinions on what they want to watch and seeing some of Rebecca turned out to be unavoidable. What little I saw made me instantly withdraw from the television room. My mom didn't last very long either, despite her love of Diana Rigg. For almost twenty years I shunned this adaptation shuddering from the memory of those few glimpses. So I thought perhaps I should give it a second chance. Maybe Diana Rigg could be a superior Mrs. Danvers? Perhaps the beauty of Manderley would be done more justice in color with it's lush abundant floral growth? Or perhaps I should have trusted my gut reaction and avoided this piece of crap entirely. What is striking about this adaptation is they have assembled some of the most talented actors in the British Isles and beyond and somehow sucked the life out of them. If it weren't for Faye Dunaway and Jonathan Cake I don't think a single line would have been uttered above a dull monotone. Rebecca is full of emotion and passion, both repressed and on full display, and yet here it comes across as the most flat and emotionless story ever. It should be turbulent and forceful like the sea, not fake and false like that shitty shack that was slapped together on the beach. After the first episode my dislike became more and more audible. Three hours and nothing went right. I kept making myself step back and think, if I hadn't read the book would I enjoy this? The answer was no time and time again. While the heavy-handed foreshadowing might have been driving me loopy, if Du Maurier was still alive I know what she'd hate most... they made this adaptation into a romance. Yes, there are romantic elements in Rebecca, but that is NOT what the book is. The moniker of "Romance Writer" hung around Du Maurier's neck like a millstone her entire life. To have her greatest novel reduced to being nothing more than a romance? No. She would have snapped. Plus, I like Charles Dance very much, don't get me wrong, but to see him groping and pawing awkwardly at Emilia Fox's cheek and sucking her face so that it looks like he's eating her. Eww. The book STRONGLY hints that the de Winters had a sexless marriage and yet here the demonstrative affection is overwhelming. It's the exact opposite of the book, yet oddly passionless. In the end one would hope that at least Emilia Fox was getting a kick out of playing a role her mother played almost twenty years earlier. And at least it appeared that Diana Rigg was having fun. At least someone was.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Charles Dance, Daphne Du Maurier, Diana Rigg, Emilia Fox, Fifty-Five Years a Masterpiece, Hitchcock, Joanna David, Jonathan Cake, Laurence Olivier, Manderley, Masterpiece Theater, Maxim de Winter, Mrs. Danvers, Rebecca

The Only One Left by Riley Sager
Published by: Dutton
Publication Date: June 20th, 2023
Format: Hardcover, 400 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Kit McDeere is out of options. When she became a caregiver she never thought it would mean that years would pass by without barely even noticing. The patients changed, the routine didn't. And then her name was splashed across the papers. She was taking care of her mother who had terminal Cancer. Only her mother died of a drug overdose. Her name has been cleared but it is not clean and no one is willing to take a chance on her. No one except for another person with nothing left to lose. Lenora Hope was an urban legend when Kit was growing up. There was a rhyme and everything, "At seventeen, Lenora Hope. Hung her sister with a rope. Stabbed her father with a knife. Took her mother’s happy life. 'It wasn’t me,' Lenora said. But she's the only one not dead." Kit never thought Lenora was real, and yet she is. Lenora needs constant care, she's in her seventies and confined to a wheelchair from a series of strokes. The only way she can communicate is using her left hand, mainly taping out yes or no answers. And yet when Kit arrives at Hope's End she is terrified of this bedridden woman. It doesn't help that the previous beloved nurse disappeared in the night never to be heard from again. The story that Kit is told, that she had to leave for a family emergency, doesn't add up. Especially when Kit tries to put unpack in her new room. Because there is no room for her possessions because their place is taken up with the previous nurse's possessions. Clothes, books, even her medical kit. This doesn't make any sense. The other staff aren't that comforting, a house keeper, a cook, a young maid, and a groundskeeper. They all seem to be a part of the pall that hangs over the estate. And as for the house itself? How does anyone live here? The floor is canted as the whole house leans towards the ocean, promising that one day it will crash off the cliffs into the cold waters below. Could that be what happened to her predecessor? One day she got too close to the edge and over she went? Kit doesn't know what or who to trust, is the schoolyard chant tainting her perceptions, or are the cracks in the walls getting bigger, the creaks in the night, the shadows under the crack in the door to Lenora's room, everything is imbued with menace. And yet, she stays, because Lenora is able to laboriously type with her left hand, and she has promised to tell Kit the truth. But what if the truth is the most dangerous secret of all?

Riley Sager perfectly understands the building blocks of a good Gothic novel. It all goes back to family and location. Just think of Flowers in the Attic, AKA incest in the attic, the Gothic pulp of it's day, family and location. Here we have two families full of secrets and a location that is to die for, literally, it might just collapse into the ocean at a moments notice. The way that Sager weaves Lenora Hope's tragic history of lost love is the stuff of Gothic nightmares. A mother, father, and sister tragically murdered, and her, alone, living at the scene of the crime, trapped forever in the past, with only her loyal retainers. A woman who should be a subject of pity but instead is a subject of fear. Fear that works it's way into Kit McDeere's mind as her own family trauma is revealed. A mother dead, the Cancer was killing her but that isn't the cause of death. That death is why Kit is at Hope's End. But there's more. There's always more with Sager, and the way these two women's lives start to come together shows what a master storyteller he is. As for the house? I never really feel that a book can be considered Gothic without a memorable location. There are so many pretenders out there who don't realize this necessity. Hill House, Manderley, Wuthering Heights, Belasco House, and now Hope's End, these are the gold standard. These are places you dream about, places that haunt you. Places you never want to visit but after you read about can never leave. Hope's End is perfection, in the most decrepit, moldering, uninhabitable way possible. It's not just that the evidence of the murders still lingers, blood spots on the stairs, a missing pool table, and a broken chandelier, it's that the house is literally falling into the ocean. You could call it hubris to build a house on a cliff, but that just adds to Lenora's father haunting her forever, his vanity destroyed her in more ways than one. But what really got to me was the fact that once you're on the second floor there's a cant the house. It is leaning towards oblivion. This makes Hope's End a kind of fun house, or should I more correctly say a house of horrors? An attraction at a local fair that has an air of menace about it, where dark carnies prowl the space between tents, and the fun house is the most terrifying place you could be trapped. Every second that they stay in the house is a second too long. You know as they do, that everything will come crashing down in the end, but the wait for that end is agonizing. This book had me reading with baited breath, a not uncommon occurrence with Sager's writing, but the ending crashed on me like the weight of those stones on the ocean as Hope's End fell. That was some ride.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Belasco House, Cancer, Family, Flowers in the Attic, Gothic, Hill House, Hope's End, Kit McDeere, Lenora Hope, Lizzie Borden, Manderley, Murder Most Foul, Riley Sager, Stroke, The Only One Left, Wuthering Heights

Rebecca
Based on the Book by Daphne Du Maurier
Starring: Emilia Fox, Charles Dance, Faye Dunaway, John Horsley, Jonathan Stokes, Diana Rigg, Tom Chadbon, Geraldine James, Denis Lill, John Branwell, Jonathan Cake, Kelly Reilly, Anthony Bate, Ian McDiarmid, Timothy West, and Lucy Cohu
Release Date: April 13th, 1997
Rating: ★
To Buy

The gregarious Mrs. Van Hopper has hired herself a mousy little companion to accompany her to Monte Carlo. Yet she's put out that the old crowd aren't around and then laid up with a sniffle. Her young companion uses this time to become close to the one person in Monte Mrs. Van Hopper is fascinated with, Maxim de Winter, the inconsolable widow and owner of the great house Manderley. When Mrs. Van Hopper decides to decamp Maxim gives the little mouse a choice, go to New York with her employer or come to Manderley with him as his wife. It isn't a hard choice to embrace being the second Mrs. de Winter, a choice that even Mrs. Van Hopper approves, because at least someone bagged him. Back at his luxurious estate in England Maxim's young new wife feels that the shadow of his first wife, Rebecca, looms large. But even despite the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, and her doom and gloom, nothing can stop the newlyweds love for each other. That is unless Maxim is still in love with Rebecca... the discovery of Rebecca's scuttled boat in the bay will try their relationship, destroying everything or bringing them closer together.

The 1996-1997 season of Masterpiece Theatre was rare for me in that I caught it entirely. I was taking a year off before college and therefore had time to luxuriate in my much loved passions of reading and watching miniseries. The adaptation of Nostromo starring Colin Firth and A Royal Scandal starring Richard E. Grant were highlights that year. In fact when I recently learned A Royal Scandal was an extra on The Queen's Sister I instantly bought the DVD, despite my dislike of The Queen's Sister. Now if they'd just release Nostromo on anything other than VHS I'd be set because I'm seriously dying with only my old taped copy. But what I wasn't looking forward to was the season ending remake of Rebecca. This was at the height of my Hitchcock fanaticism, having taken film classes in high school and planning on taking more in college, and I couldn't comprehend why anyone would remake a classic.

Yes, Hitchcock didn't get it 100% right, but you can not deny that Laurence Olivier IS Maxim de Winter. It won best picture at the Oscars! So I planned to boycott the remake. The problem when living with your parents is that they have their own opinions on what they want to watch and seeing some of Rebecca turned out to be unavoidable. What little I saw made me instantly withdraw from the television room. My mom didn't last very long either, despite her love of Diana Rigg. For almost twenty years I have shunned this adaptation shuddering from the memory of those few glimpses. So I thought perhaps I should give it a second chance. Maybe Diana Rigg could be a superior Mrs. Danvers? Perhaps the beauty of Manderley would be done more justice in color with it's lush abundant floral growth? Or perhaps I should have trusted my gut reaction and avoided this piece of crap entirely.

What is striking about this adaptation is they have assembled some of the most talented actors in the British Isles and beyond and somehow sucked the life out of them. If it weren't for Faye Dunaway and Jonathan Cake I don't think a single line would have been uttered above a dull monotone. Rebecca is full of emotion and passion, both repressed and on full display, and yet here it comes across as the most flat and emotionless story ever. It should be turbulent and forceful like the sea, not fake and false like that shitty shack that was slapped together on the beach. After the first episode my dislike became more and more audible. Three hours and nothing went right. I was visibly cringing at all that they got wrong. The second Mrs. de Winter isn't just shy with a can do attitude but meek! Oh the rage! But even if I hadn't been comparing it to the book, it was awful. I kept making myself step back and think, if I hadn't read the book would I enjoy this? The answer was no time and time again.

While the heavy-handed foreshadowing might have been driving me loopy, if Du Maurier was still alive I know what she'd hate most... they made this adaptation into a romance. Yes, there are romantic elements in Rebecca, but that is NOT what the book is. The moniker of "Romance Writer" hung around Du Maurier's neck like a millstone her entire life. To have her greatest novel reduced to being nothing more than a romance? No. She would have snapped. Plus, I like Charles Dance very much, don't get me wrong, his performance of himself in Jam and Jerusalem, Clatterford stateside, is one of my favorite cameos on TV ever; but to see him groping and pawing awkwardly at Emilia Fox's cheek and sucking her face so that it looks like he's eating her. Eww. The book STRONGLY hints that the de Winters had a sexless marriage and yet here the demonstrative affection is overwhelming. It's the exact opposite of the book, yet oddly passionless. And that lame excuse made for their lack of children? Like Maxim would run into a burning building to save Mrs. Danvers? NO!

Yet, I have to give props where props are due. These go to Diana Rigg and Jonathan Cake, Mrs. Danvers and Jack Favell, Rebecca's maid and blackmailing cousin, respectively. I think these two actually read the source material, which Arthur Hopcraft obviously didn't when adapting this because who would purposefully change the famous introductory chapter and slap it into an upbeat coda? But enough about Arthur Hopcraft because this obviously ended his career if you check out IMDB. As for Hitchcock he proves that even the greats can get it wrong and he just didn't get Mrs. Danvers, and went camp and over the top. Diana Rigg nails it. The sadness that is behind that stiff facade. As for Cake, I don't think I can pay him a higher compliment than saying I really thought he WAS Favell. Rigg and Cake got the menacing down perfectly. Yet they also had the depth Du Maurier demanded of these characters. While they had the menace, they also had the vulnerability, and ultimately the patheticness of these two and how hollow their last act, destroying Manderley, really is.

But in the end, seeing as this miniseries was called Rebecca, you'd think they'd at least get her right? Yet they didn't. It's almost as if Rebecca is an afterthought. She should be front and center, there, oppressing Maxim and his new wife every single second of their time at Manderley, but she's oddly not there. It's like Mrs. Danvers and Jack Favell are the only ones who remember and it's only when they are around that Rebecca still lives. Otherwise it's as if she's long dead and long gone, not "haunting" them as should be the case. But this couldn't very well have been a romance if they concentrated on the Gothic nature of the book with Rebecca haunting Manderley now could it? As for when Rebecca actually appears... she's impressionistic and the camera is just too fucking close to her face. I wouldn't know it was Lucy Cohu, an actress I quite like who stared in the aforementioned movie The Queen's Sister, if it wasn't for the credits. Therefore we can say that like the book, there's a problem with Rebecca. Here it's her irrelevancy, there it's her possession of you body and soul. Let the book possess you and avoid this catastrophe. 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Charles Dance, Daphne Du Maurier, Diana Rigg, Du Maurier December, Emilia Fox, Hitchcock, Jonathan Cake, Lucy Cohu, Manderley, Masterpiece Theater, Mrs. Danvers, Rebecca, Richard E. Grant, Romance

Rebecca
Based on the movie based on the book by Daphne Du Maurier
Starring: Joan Hackett, James Mason, Murray Matheson, Joan Croydon, Spencer Davis, Franklyn Fox, Byron Russell, Lloyd Bochner, and Nina Foch
Release Date: 1962
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

The second Mrs. de Winter is speeding back to England with her new husband after a whirlwind romance. They are returning to his home in Cornwall, Manderley, which he abandoned a year ago on the death of his first wife, Rebecca. As they get closer to England Maxim is moody and volatile, but his young bride hopes that she will make him happy, no matter the shoes she has to fill. The housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, has gathered the staff to welcome their master home, despite having orders to do no such thing. But Mrs. Danvers goes her own way, so much so that she keeps Rebecca's room in the west wing as a shrine to her late mistress, which the second Mrs. de Winter finds more than a little unnerving. After all, she is the mistress of the manor now, no matter what everyone else might think of her. Yet everywhere she goes, from the morning room to the beach she is reminded of Rebecca, and Maxim's rage on the subject can only mean he still dearly loves his first wife. Perhaps it would be best if she just left. It would please Mrs. Danvers to no end, and perhaps Maxim would be happier. But then there is a discovering after a shipwreck, Rebecca has returned and she might destroy everyone and everything.

This adaptation of Rebecca might be the most interesting I've watched to date due to it's restrictions. Aired in 1962 it was broadcast live and had only an hour, with commercials, to tell the doomed story of Rebecca's life. Therefore what you get is the book told in shorthand with just the high points of the story being hit. Here's the broken cupid statue, here's Rebecca's sleazy cousin, here's Mrs. Danvers's shrine to her mistress, here's the party, and here's Rebecca, dead at the bottom of the ocean from her husband's hands, but seeing as she was dying of Cancer a verdict of suicide is easily confirmed. What with the more copious use of narration, which makes sense due to the first person structure of the book, I actually couldn't find much fault with this production. Sure, the transfer hasn't aged well and there's lens distortion, but somehow they were able to work around their limitations and give what I think is a very solid adaptation. Because they stripped the story to it's barest elements and then added back in some of Du Maurier's own lyricism what they ended up with might actually be my favorite adaptation I've seen so far.

The true reason this adaptation succeeds is because of Joan Hackett's acting. As the second Mrs. de Winter she oozed naivete. While I'm a huge fan of Joan Fontaine, in Hitchcock's version of Rebecca she has a tendency to overact with her eyes that sometimes borders on the absurd. Here Joan Hackett brought a more natural feel to the roll, something I'm sure Du Maurier herself would approve of as she time and time again claims that her father, the late "great" Gerald Du Maurier, created natural acting. With each and every movement and gesture Joan Hackett WAS the second Mrs. de Winter to me. The way she plays with her fingers and nibbles on her cuticles just felt so right, whereas when Joan Fonatine would just be scolded by Laurence Olivier to leave her hands alone after broadly signalling she was about to bring her fingers toward her mouth. But to me it all came down to a scene in the beginning. The first morning she's at Manderley the second Mrs. de Winter comes down to breakfast with her very large purse in tow. I don't know if Fontaine did this, but to do this in your own home? It felt so gauche and so right!

When I first heard of this adaptation the number one thing that intrigued me was that Maxim de Winter is played by James Mason. I never think of James Mason as the leading man, more the leading villain. Yes, I know this isn't the case, but his voice lends itself so well to villainy! Yet it turns out that James Mason is underused in this adaptation. Yes, this helps in the fact that he doesn't overshadow his new bride, whose story this really is, but having James Mason and then not really using him seems kind of a waste. As it is James Mason and therefore Maxim de Winter instead of being a well-rounded character is rather one-dimensional. All he is here for is heavy-handed foreshadowing. They are on the boat home from France, his young bride mentions swimming and drowning, he blows up. His young bride mentions the beach, "WE NEVER TALK ABOUT THE BEACH!" He finds her at the beach, "NEVER COME HERE AGAIN!" It would almost be funny if it wasn't such a waste of a good actor. And even if you'd never read Rebecca or watched Hitchcock's adaptation I'm sure you could have quickly put the pieces together that Rebecca drowned off the beach... so yeah, real subtle foreshadowing...

The one thing that really bothered me though was that unlike the book this adaptation HAD to have Mrs. Danvers burn with Manderley, just like Hitchcock. Just because Hitchcock deviated in such a drastic way from the book to absurd heights of melodrama doesn't mean every adaptation after his has to do the same. But in this case it did, if you bothered to watch the credits. Because this isn't actually an adaptation of the book by Du Maurier, it's an adaptation of the Hitchcock film. WTF!?! I mean, that's weird right? To abridge a movie and redo it for TV? In fact looking at the Theatre '62 season, of the seven episodes at least five of them were Hitchcock movies first! Really, was this normal? Instead of just showing the movie show their shortened version of it with different famous actors? In fact several of the other episodes star actors Hitchcock has worked with like Joseph Cotton! Yet while they claim it's an adaptation of an adaptation the screenplay writer obviously went back to the source, Du Maurier's own words. Because I think Ellen M. Violett's choice to include more narration, thus being more inside our heroine's head, led to a more lyrical adaptation in tune with the book. Whereas Hitchock was notorious for changing things to fit his needs, here it feels more like Du Maurier is speaking to us not cursing Hitchcock from the stalls.

Now, I admit I'm going to diverge from topic here, but I can not NOT mention the ads that are on this adaptation. Who was the genius who decided not to edit them out? I want to shake their hand! The ads are all sponsored by the gas board, better living through gas! I adored the wonderful vintage of these ads. But I also have a lot of questions. Who thought that naming the gas cooktop on the range the "surface of flame" a good idea. All I can think of is conflagrations. And how is gas flame "cool?" Isn't calling a flame cool an oxymoron? Where is Don Draper when you need some better copy? From stoves to dryers, gas lighting which didn't go out of fashion in the gilded age like any logical person might have thought, to whole house heating and cooling, I now know more then I ever could about gas options for your home in the early sixties! And I think that is wonderful. This was a real slice of life and by keeping it in the show it shows where the ad cuts had to be for costume changes and set changes, this was ALL LIVE you must remember. This literally took my viewing experience to the next level but also makes me question the wisdom of the ad executives. You are advertising gas, aka fire, on an adaptation of Rebecca? You do know it ends with the house in flames right? Not the best message to send. As for the ad from the American Cancer Society? Rebecca, the villain of the piece, was diagnosed with terminal Cancer... um... awkward much?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Advertising, Daphne Du Maurier, Don Draper, Du Maurier December, Hitchcock, James Mason, Joan Fontaine, Joan Hackett, Joseph Cotton, Laurence Olivier, Live, Manderley, Rebecca, Television, Theatre 62

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
Published by: Virago Press
Publication Date: 1938
Format: Paperback, 448 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and chain upon the gate... Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done."

As she looks back on the twists and turns that brought her to Manderley, the second Mrs. de Winter can't help but wonder how her life ended up as it did. She had resigned herself to an existence as a paid companion trailing behind whomever had hired her, the reprehensible Mrs. Van Hoppper being her employer at the beginning of her story. That all changed when Maxim de Winter entered her life in his fast car. He was in the south of France fleeing the memories of his dead wife Rebecca and the one thing that blotted her out was the young girl who would become his second wife. Yet perhaps their union was foolish, or Maxim's dream to return to Manderley was unwise. Because back in England their life is haunted by the memories of his first wife, Rebecca. The specter that is hallowed by the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, and is a constant comparative presence for the new wife. Could Rebecca destroy their happiness from beyond the grave? Or will Rebecca need a little assistance from Mrs. Danvers?

When I was young my mother subscribed to The Franklin Library Mystery Masterpieces. Each month a new book would arrive and we'd set it in pride of place on our console bookshelf that housed our most prized possessions, this being the eighties it mainly housed records and our record player. The little nine year old that I was loved that each month another volume would come and expand the display on that orangey wood that just glowed with an inner light. Then one day The Franklin Library sent us the biggest box I had ever seen. They were discontinuing the Mystery Masterpieces and they sent us the remaining volumes all at once. At this time we probably had only ten volumes, so forty-two books showed up one day to our great astonishment and delight.

Until recently these books have been packed away as self space was scare; all but a few choice volumes which I had secreted away. When I was young I loved to spend time reading the spines and looking at the pictures and wondering what the books were about and making up my own stories, especially about The Thirty-Nine Steps, which really disappointed me when I found out what it was truly about. When they first arrived I was too young to read most of the titles, and when I was older I was too into movies to bother with books. That all changed. Obviously. But Rebecca, the movie, was like a gateway drug. I adored the film and then I looked on our shelf. There was Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, one of the first books we'd gotten in this series, after the obligatory Agatha Christie volume that is. This particular edition would make it's way into my library and my heart.

Rebecca is that rare book that cries out to be read and re-read over and over again, each time a different interpretation and meaning unearthed. The opening line that transports you, like a dream, to Manderley. You can get lost in the happy valley among the flowers and never want to return from those magical pages. But I don't think that you truly get the book's greatness without knowing the context of Du Maurier's world, mainly her obsession with the Brontes. This is much in the vein of why people don't realize the genius of Northanger Abbey, which is a parody of the Gothic genre, not "serious" like Austen's other books! Du Maurier's first book, The Loving Spirit, takes it's name from a poem by Emily Bronte. More then twenty years after writing Rebecca her misguided biography on Branwell Bronte was published and forever secured her connection to them. Therefore the echoes of Jane Eyre that haunt Rebecca should not be thought a surprise or the least bit unintentional. Du Maurier was writing a new classic that would pay homage to and reflect Jane Eyre. A Jane Eyre for modern sensibilities, if you will.

Just as Jamaica Inn is to Wuthering Heights, so is Rebecca to Jane Eyre, just look at the similarities. The naive young girl ready for love, the misanthropic hero, the crazy wife, the destructive fire. What amazes me is that if you look at just the building blocks of these two books they should be eerily similar, yet they aren't. Each book is a classic in it's own right, but the ghost of Jane Eyre isn't the only ghost that Rebecca tackles, after all there is Rebecca herself. While there is that chilling line delivered by Mrs. Danvers "Do you think the dead come back and watch the living?" What we think of as ghosts can take many forms. There are no spectral apparitions here, no things that go bump in the night, but that doesn't mean Rebecca doesn't haunt Manderley.

Rebecca recurs persistently in the consciousness of the second Mrs. de Winter causing her distress and anxiety, but she was also the bosom friend of Mrs. Danvers. Mrs. Danvers, more then anyone, works to keep Rebecca alive and in doing so makes her specter part of the foundation of Manderley itself. This is an interesting conceit on Du Maurier's part, because really, this is a ghost story without a ghost. The memory and emotion left behind is what haunts us, and if anyone could do this, it's Rebecca. As Captain Jack Harkness said on Torchwood, "Human emotion is energy. You can't always see it or hear it, but you can feel it. Ever had deja vu? Felt someone walk over your grave? Ever felt someone behind you in an empty room? Well there was. There always is."

Yet Rebecca isn't the only ghost. There's another person who haunts Manderley, she is always there, ever present, but in the shadow of Rebecca. I am of course talking about the second Mrs. de Winter. She is but mere shadow, a trace, a semblance of a person. She in fact has no name but that which Rebecca had, Mrs. de Winter. This is the most fascinating aspect of the book and many others have discussed it's importance, that the heroine has no name. One result of this namlessness is that she is a ghost, a cipher, a way to tell Rebecca's story through new eyes but without complicating the matter by creating a character with backbone.

Of course this is a two edged sword, on the one hand Du Maurier is pushing the second Mrs. de Winter into the background, but on the other hand by creating a blank slate, a character who has no real "character" we are able to put ourselves more easily into her shoes. This literary trick, I mean, really, I want to stand and applaud Du Maurier. By giving us this conduit there are so many ramifications to the narrative. By being one with the second Mrs. de Winter you therefore embrace Maxim, her husband, and therefore condone his actions. The genius of Rebecca is that Daphne Du Maurier has made you complicit in murder and you loved every second of it.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bronte, Captain Jack, Daphne Du Maurier, Du Maurier December, Jamaica Inn, Jane Eyre, Manderley, Maxim de Winter, Mrs. Danvers, Northanger Abbey, Rebecca, The Loving Spirit, Torchwood, Wuthering Heights

Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart
Published by: Chicago Review Press
Publication Date: 1958
Format: Paperback, 342 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Linda Martin was born in France and lived their till her parents died suddenly in a plane crash and she went to an English orphanage. Years passed, filled with hard work and loneliness. When an opportunity arises to go back to France as a governess to the Comte de Valmy, the nine-year-old Philippe, Linda doesn't scruple to pretend she is English to Philippe's Aunt Héloïse in order to secure the position. The Château Valmy is located in a remote valley in the Alps and is breathtaking, despite it's seclusion, or maybe because of it. Linda and Philippe connect instantly, both being lonely souls orphaned at a young age. She is a surprisingly adept and forward-thinking companion for Philippe and saves him from a few dreadful accidents that might have happened if not for her. While she worries for Philippe's safety at the hands of his mysterious uncle and her boss, Léon de Valmy, Linda is in for a far greater predicament when she finds herself falling for Léon's rapscallion son, Raoul. Her love for Raoul blinds her to what is obviously going on in the Château and when she realizes the danger that she and Philippe are in it might just be too late... hurry, hurry, hurry — Ay, to the devil!

For many people, including myself, Mary Stewart is known for her Merlin series. Growing up in the 90s when I did surrounded by geeks who spent all their spare time discussing The Lord of the Rings in detail or playing Dungeons and Dragons or memorizing "Jabberwocky" in German, Mary Stewart was the female T.H. White. In fact, it wasn't until years later that I learned that Mary Stewart didn't only write about Arthurian Legend. To those in the "know" Mary Stewart was a writer of contemporary Gothic romances. I didn't learn about this other side of her till after high school when I started reading Austen and Bronte and developed a passion for historical fiction. Due to the enthusiastic following of these books by Stewart and in no small part to the reviews in the Bas Bleu catalog I started to pick up a book here and there over the years as the Chicago Review Press re-released them till I have now amassed a fairly comprehensive collection of Stewart's works. But alas, they have mainly just been sitting on my bookshelves looking pretty. Every so often I would look at the books and think, soon. I've been thinking this for awhile now and still they languished. The one interesting fact of waiting this long is not just the number of people who keep recommending Stewart's books to me over and over again, but that one book was recommended more than any other. That book was Nine Coaches Waiting. So Nine Coaches Waiting is waiting no more.

What I thought was very interesting about Stewart's writing is that she is able to take an idea that might be very gimmicky and spin it into something that works. At the beginning of the book Linda thinks of the quote from the play The Revenger's Tragedy about "Nine coaches waiting — hurry, hurry, hurry — Ay, to the devil!" Besides serving as the title of the book it serves as to how the book is broken down into chapters. Each chapter is a different "coach" with nine coaches, or chapters, in total. Though Stewart means this more literally then you might think. In each chapter Linda takes one vehicle somewhere, to Geneva or just down the road. But it's only a car that Linda has been in that counts. So the cars act as a literal driving force for the book, because unless Linda gets in a car and is getting ready to get in another there won't be another chapter to start. This is one of those ideas that hangs around that cool/looking like a dickhead place on the fashion scale, only I'd quantify it as clever/lame gimmick on the storytelling scale. It's such a clever conceit that it could easily come across as smug that the author was "oh so clever" to have thought of it in the first place. But that's what I really like about Stewart, she never comes across as smug. She gets what she's doing but does it in a way that makes it fun and self-referential. Her ability to laugh at herself and give her readers a nod and a wink makes what would be conceited actually quite endearing.

This endearing quality continues into the Jane Eyre jokes. They are nicely playful without being self-satisfied and smug. As you're reading you're thinking, oh, how Jane Eyre, then Linda thinks it, and you're like spooky, but then her very Mr. Rochester boss, Léon de Valmy, says what both you and Linda are thinking and it's spooky but also amusing all at once. Like a nervous laugh that dispels the tension. Mary Stewart doesn't take herself or her narrative too seriously and you become complicit in the fun, and this, more then anything else, made the book for me. The Bronte allusions didn't hurt either. But there's one author you really can't help comparing Stewart to, and that's another fan of the Brontes, I'm talking about Daphne Du Maurier. Both are masters of the Gothic romance, but, well, Mary Stewart loses something of the Gothic sensibility in the modernity of her storytelling that Du Maurier was always able to hold onto. Nine Coaches Waiting is just not as Gothic as I expected it to be. Moreover, there are times when Stewart reaches beyond her ability as a writer and the results are painful. Stewart has problems with descriptions of her surroundings. Not only does her compass points shift and turn till you're not quite sure what the orientation of the valley and surrounding areas are, but her attempts at lyricism as to the beauty of her alpine surrounds is totally beyond her grasp. The descriptions fall flat and are just a pale imitation of Daphne Du Maurier, especially when you think of the verdant and lush growth that surrounds Manderley. Sometimes a writer needs a little reminder of what they do best and what the shouldn't attempt in the face of superior talent.

As for those Alpine surrounds, what is it about governesses and the alps that go together like a hand and a glove? While The Sound of Music wasn't a musical till a year after Nine Coaches Waiting, the Trapp family's story was well known thanks to their music, and the film The Trapp Family, as well as Maria's autobiography, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. So I'm sure that Stewart, in her comedic self-referential style, was fully aware of the connotations she was making in her readers minds. How could it be avoided with a governess in the alps!?! What mystifies me is the hold The Sound of Music has on so many people. So many authors, especially ones who like to write about governesses, site this movie as an important touchstone. I get the cultural impact, but the love? I seriously do not see it. The songs border on the annoying and once they're in your head they just never leave. Plus, despite how well Julie Andrews can hold a tune, I really didn't see the Captain falling for this upstart with a bad pageboy haircut. I understand the lure of the romance, but still. Perhaps it's that every time I think of The Sound of Music I'm back in 6th grade laying on the couch with the chicken pox watching the movie on Christmas Day. I don't think we knew it was chicken pox yet, but I do remember being wrapped up in a blanket on the couch, watching the whole movie, being tucked into bed, and promptly vomiting all over myself. Therefore it's best if I'm not reminded of this incident, in any way, shape, or form.

Speaking of vomit... yes, interesting segue that, but some of Linda's thoughts made me want to vomit. Let's look at her actions first, she is a competent governess, doesn't let on that she speaks French fluently and in fact speaks it badly on purpose, teaches and helps Philippe, saving his life several times by her forethought, including a late night flit into the wilderness. In other words, Linda kicks ass. Yet her inner monologue is just a little too self-hating. She thinks of herself as being a "silly woman" with her fears when what she does is seriously awesome. She is willing to give up true love and safety forever to protect one little child and she does it without a pang. Yet she'll go on about her thoughts being irrelevant or herself being worthless. I'm sorry, but firstly, no. No one is worthless. Secondly, she has proven time and time again that this is totally not the case. More importantly, this is just showing how much culture has always pushed women to undervalue themselves as second class citizens. Yes, I could argue that what Linda does versus what Linda thinks makes her a more interesting character because it shows how people have self doubts even while facing down tremendous odds, but I won't argue that. Mary Stewart is a female writer who knows better. Linda is strong and should be lauded, not second guessed by her own little grey cells.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bronte, Cars, Daphne Du Maurier, France, Going Gothic, Gothic, Jane Eyre, Manderley, Mary Stewart, Merlin, Nine Coaches Waiting, Rebecca, Swiss Alps, The Revenger's Tragedy, The Sound of Music

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
Published by: Virago Press
Publication Date: 1938
Format: Paperback, 448 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and chain upon the gate... Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done."

As she looks back on the twists and turns that brought her to Manderley, the second Mrs. de Winter can't help but wonder how her life ended up as it did. She had resigned herself to an existence as a paid companion trailing behind whomever had hired her, the reprehensible Mrs. Van Hoppper being her employer at the beginning of her story. That all changed when Maxim de Winter entered her life in his fast car. He was in the south of France fleeing the memories of his dead wife Rebecca and the one thing that blotted her out was the young girl who would become his second wife. Yet perhaps their union was foolish, or Maxim's dream to return to Manderley was unwise. Because back in England their life is haunted by the memories of his first wife, Rebecca. The specter that is hallowed by the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, and is a constant comparative presence for the new wife. Could Rebecca destroy their happiness from beyond the grave? Or will Rebecca need a little assistance from Mrs. Danvers?

When I was young my mother subscribed to The Franklin Library Mystery Masterpieces. Each month a new book would arrive and we'd set it in pride of place on our console bookshelf that housed our most prized possessions, this being the eighties it mainly housed records and our record player. The little nine year old that I was loved that each month another volume would come and expand the display on that orangey wood that just glowed with an inner light. Then one day The Franklin Library sent us the biggest box I had ever seen. They were discontinuing the Mystery Masterpieces and they sent us the remaining volumes all at once. At this time we probably had only ten volumes, so forty-two books showed up one day to our great astonishment and delight.

Until recently these books have been packed away as self space was scare; all but a few choice volumes which I had secreted away. When I was young I loved to spend time reading the spines and looking at the pictures and wondering what the books were about and making up my own stories, especially about The Thirty-Nine Steps, which really disappointed me when I found out what it was really about. When they first arrived I was too young to read most of the titles, and when I was older I was too into movies to bother with books. That all changed. Obviously. But Rebecca, the movie, was like a gateway drug. I adored the film and then I looked on our shelf. There was Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, one of the first books we'd gotten in this series, after the obligatory Agatha Christie volume that is. This particular edition would make it's way into my library and my heart.

Rebecca is that rare book that cries out to be read and re-read over and over again, each time a different interpretation and meaning unearthed. The opening line that transports you, like a dream, to Manderley. You can get lost in the happy valley among the flowers and never want to return from those magical pages. But I don't think that you truly get the book's greatness without knowing the context of Du Maurier's world, mainly her obsession with the Brontes. This is much in the vein of why people don't realize the genius of Northanger Abbey, which is a parody of the Gothic genre, not "serious" like Austen's other books! Du Maurier's first book, The Loving Spirit, takes it's name from a poem by Emily Bronte. More then twenty years after writing Rebecca her misguided biography on Branwell Bronte was published and forever secured her connection to them. Therefore the echoes of Jane Eyre that haunt Rebecca should not be thought a surprise or the least bit unintentional. Du Maurier was writing a new classic that would pay homage to and reflect Jane Eyre. A Jane Eyre for modern sensibilities, if you will.

Just as Jamaica Inn is to Wuthering Heights, so is Rebecca to Jane Eyre, just look at the similarities. The naive young girl ready for love, the misanthropic hero, the crazy wife, the destructive fire. What amazes me is that if you look at just the building blocks of these books they should be eerily similar, yet they aren't. Each book is a classic in it's own right, but the ghost of Jane Eyre isn't the only ghost that Rebecca tackles, after all there is Rebecca herself. While there is that chilling line delivered by Mrs. Danvers "Do you think the dead come back and watch the living?" What we think of as ghosts can take many forms. There are no spectral apparitions here, no things that go bump in the night, but that doesn't mean Rebecca doesn't haunt Manderley.

Rebecca recurs persistently in the consciousness of the second Mrs. de Winter causing her distress and anxiety, but she is also the bosom friend of Mrs. Danvers. Mrs. Danvers, more then anyone, works to keep Rebecca alive and in doing so makes her specter part of the foundation of Manderley itself. This is an interesting conceit on Du Maurier's part, because really, this is a ghost story without a ghost. The memory and emotion left behind is what haunts us, and if anyone could do this, it's Rebecca. As Captain Jack Harkness said on Torchwood, "Human emotion is energy. You can't always see it or hear it, but you can feel it. Ever had deja vu? Felt someone walk over your grave? Ever felt someone behind you in an empty room? Well there was. There always is."

Yet Rebecca isn't the only ghost. There's another person who haunts Manderley, she is always there, ever present, but in the shadow of Rebecca. I am of course talking about the second Mrs. de Winter. She is but mere shadow, a trace, a semblance of a person. She in fact has no name but that which Rebecca had, Mrs. de Winter. This is the most fascinating aspect of the book and many others have discussed it's importance, that the heroine has no name. One result of this namlessness is that she is a ghost, a cipher, a way to tell Rebecca's story through new eyes but without complicating the matter by creating a character with backbone.

Of course this is a two edged sword, on the one hand Du Maurier is pushing the second Mrs. de Winter into the background, but on the other hand by creating a blank slate, a character who has no real "character" we are able to put ourselves more easily into her shoes. This literary trick, I mean, really, I want to stand and applaud Du Maurier. By giving use this conduit there are so many ramifications to the narrative. By being one with the second Mrs. de Winter you therefore embrace Maxim, her husband, and therefore not just identify but condone his actions. The genius of Rebecca is that Daphne Du Maurier has made you complicit in murder and you loved every second of it.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Daphne Du Maurier, Emily Bronte, Franklin Library, Jane Austen, Jane Eyre, Manderley, Maxim de Winter, Mrs. Danvers, Northanger Abbey, Rebecca, Sweet Reads, Torchwood

Cold Earth by Ann Cleeves
Published by: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: April 18th, 2017
Format: Hardcover, 400 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"From Ann Cleeves, winner of the CWA Diamond Dagger Award, comes Cold Earth.

In the dark days of a Shetland winter, torrential rain triggers a landslide that crosses the main road and sweeps down to the sea.

At the burial of his old friend Magnus Tait, Jimmy Perez watches the flood of mud and water smash through a house in its path. Everyone thinks the home is uninhabited, but in the wreckage he finds the body of a dark-haired woman wearing a red silk dress. Perez soon becomes obsessed with tracing her identity and realizes he must find out who she was and how she died.

Cold Earth is the seventh book in the beloved Shetland series, which is now a major success for the BBC."

Anyone else glad that the TV shows based on her books are a success meaning we're finally getting the books stateside?

A Line Made by Walking by Sara Baume
Published by: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication Date: April 18th, 2017
Format: Hardcover, 320 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"The author of the award-winning Spill Simmer Falter Wither returns with a stunning new novel about a young artist's search for meaning and healing in rural Ireland.

Struggling to cope with urban life-and life in general-Frankie, a twenty-something artist, retreats to her family's rural house on "turbine hill," vacant since her grandmother's death three years earlier. It is in this space, surrounded by countryside and wild creatures, that she can finally grapple with the chain of events that led her here-her shaky mental health, her difficult time in art school-and maybe, just maybe, regain her footing in art and life.

As Frankie picks up photography once more, closely examining the natural world around her, she reconsiders seminal works of art and their relevance. With "prose that makes sure we look and listen," Sara Baume has written an elegant novel that is as much an exploration of wildness, the art world, mental illness, and community as it is a profoundly beautiful and powerful meditation on life."

I want to run away and just regain my footing, art, and life! 

The Walworth Beauty by Michele Roberts
Published by: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publication Date: April 18th, 2017
Format: Paperback, 400 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"From the Booker-shortlisted author comes a sensuous, evocative novel exploring the lives of women in Victorian London, for fans of Sarah Waters, Emma Donoghue and Kate Atkinson 2011: When Madeleine loses her job as a lecturer, she decides to leave her riverside flat in cobbled Stew Lane, where history never feels far away, and move to Apricot Place. Yet here too, in this quiet Walworth cul-de-sac, she senses the past encroaching: a shifting in the atmosphere, a current of unseen life. 1851: and Joseph Benson has been employed by Henry Mayhew to help research his articles on the working classes. A family man with mouths to feed, Joseph is tasked with coaxing testimony from prostitutes. Roaming the Southwark streets, he is tempted by brothels' promises of pleasure - and as he struggles with his assignment, he seeks answers in Apricot Place, where the enigmatic Mrs Dulcimer runs a boarding house. As these entwined stories unfold, alive with the sensations of London past and present, the two eras brush against each other - a breath at Madeleine's neck, a voice in her head - the murmurs of ghosts echoing through time. Rendered in immediate, intoxicating prose, The Walworth Beauty is a haunting tale of desire and exploitation, isolation and loss, and the faltering search for human connection; this is Michele Roberts at her masterful best."

YAS! Go Victorian times!

Manderley Forever by Tatiana de Rosnay
Published by: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date: April 18th, 2017
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"The nonfiction debut from beloved international sensation and #1 New York Times bestselling author Tatiana de Rosnay: her bestselling biography of novelist Daphne du Maurier.

“It's impressive how Tatiana was able to recreate the personality of my mother, including her sense of humor. It is very well written and very moving. I’m sure my mother would have loved this book.” ― Tessa Montgomery d’Alamein, daughter of Daphné du Maurier, as told to Pauline Sommelet in Point de Vue.

As a bilingual bestselling novelist with a mixed Franco-British bloodline and a host of eminent forebears, Tatiana de Rosnay is the perfect candidate to write a biography of Daphne du Maurier. As an eleven-year-old de Rosnay read and reread Rebecca, becoming a lifelong devotee of Du Maurier’s fiction. Now de Rosnay pays homage to the writer who influenced her so deeply, following Du Maurier from a shy seven-year-old, a rebellious sixteen-year-old, a twenty-something newlywed, and finally a cantankerous old lady. With a rhythm and intimacy to its prose characteristic of all de Rosnay’s works, Manderley Forever is a vividly compelling portrait and celebration of an intriguing, hugely popular and (at the time) critically underrated writer."

Let's open the vault and get those Du Maurier secrets! 

Elephi: The Cat with the High IQ by Jean Stafford
Published by: Dover Publications
Publication Date: April 18th, 2017
Format: Paperback, 80 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Elephi Pelephi Well Known Cat Formerly Kitten lives a comfortable life with a kind but dull couple who often leave him to his own devices. Being a cat with a high IQ, he longs for stimulating companionship, and when he spies a snow-covered car outside his Fifth Avenue apartment, Elephi recognizes the opportunity for an adventure. Taking advantage of an open door, the intrepid cat bolts out to the street and devises a rescue for the abandoned vehicle, a daring maneuver that leads to comic confusion and a surprising new friendship.

Splendid black-and-white drawings that evoke New York City of the 1960s complement this classic by the winner of the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Jean Stafford is best known for her short stories, which appeared in the New Yorker and other literary magazines. Her own beloved pet inspired this tale of Elephi, Stafford's only children's book, which is clearly the work of someone who loves and understands cats."

The cat is wearing a monocle! I'm sold.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Line Made by Walking, Ann Cleeves, Cold Earth, Daphne Du Maurier, Elephi The Cat with the High IQ, Jean Stafford, Manderley, Michele Roberts, Sara Baume, Tatiana de Rosnay, The Walworth Beauty

Fiercombe Manor by Kate Riordan
Published by: William Morrow
Publication Date: August 11th, 2015
Format: Paperback, 368 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Alice has failed to live up to her mother's expectations. Yes, Alice has a good job, but no gentlemen callers to raise her from typist to wife, the best promotion she could hope for. Maybe if she got a job in a restaurant she could have more opportunities to catch a guy's eye, but Alice likes the prestige of where she works. Alice also has a secret, one that won't be hidden for much longer. There's a reason there are no gentlemen callers, because Alice fell for a married man. A married man who has gotten her pregnant and, in the eyes of her mother, disgraced. Alice's mother's priority is to get her daughter secreted away so that none of their acquaintances will know their shame. To that end she contacts an old friend, Mrs. Jelphs. Mrs. Jelphs is the housekeeper of Fiercombe Manor, a grand old estate in Gloucestershire where the house is kept in ready for a family, the Stantons, that live entirely overseas. Alice can have the baby, give it up for adoption, and return home as though none of this ever happened, with Mrs. Jelphs being fed a line about painful memories due to the sudden death of Alice's non-existent husband for her need to convalesce in the country. This plan could have worked perfectly if not for the fact that as Alice's condition proves nothing in life goes according to plan and Fiercombe Manor holds secrets darker than Alice's. When Alice meets young Tom Stanton, home on family business, she is determined to route out the secrets of what happened thirty years earlier to the pregnant Lady Elizabeth Stanton, Tom's Aunt, as she starts to fall for the young heir. Can disastrous decisions lead to a happily ever after for Alice or is her fate just as tragic as Elizabeth's?

Funnily enough this is the book that kickstarted my plunge into Gothic literature. Last July various pressures were impacting my life and I just wanted to escape somewhere gloomy, away from the heat and the present. I wanted a book to fit my mood, with a grand old house and a supernatural bent set anytime but now. I went to the Internet and the Internet spat Fiercombe Manor back at me. Literally everyone kept recommending this book to me. Compared to Rebecca, a classic that can never be imitated, and The Little Stranger, a book I have a complicated relationship to, I should have started to be wary. I so hoped this book would fill this void in me, this need, but it just wasn't to be. Nothing in the book lived up to the moniker of Gothic and trying to escape the heat of a Midwest summer by reading about the unseasonable heat of a English summer... yeah... not what I had planned. I actually struggled with finishing this book. It threw me off my reading goals entirely. I hate it when a bad book knocks you off the rails and you just can't get past it to get back into the reading groove. Eleven days it took me to slog through this book and I was left unsatisfied. In fact I picked up more and more books hoping to find some solace in good Gothic literature, and the truth is I should have just stuck with the classics, Du Maurier, Jackson, they knew their craft and set out to do something original not be poseurs and ride the coattails of other greater authors. They are the standard to which all is judged and most found lacking.

The main problem I had with this book was that it was trying way too hard to be in the style of Daphne Du Maurier. Yes, there's a reason people keep comparing Fiercombe Manor to Rebecca, and that's because Riordan is trying SO HARD to make you believe it. I actually wonder if she was able to delude herself with the recluse valley, the hidden home, and the lush vegetation. It didn't fool me for a minute because there is no one who will ever be able to write like Du Maurier with her ability to capture nature with her lyrical descriptions of effulgent flowers coupled with looming dread. NO ONE! I mean seriously, stop trying. Any book compared to the classic that is Rebecca is bound to let the reader down. This is one of the most perfect books ever written and to try to say this author whom, let's face it, I've never heard of until now could come close? I should have known it was not going to happen. But this leads to an interesting question, a lot of people look for books that are read-a-likes, books that evoke or are similar in style to other books they love. When do recommendations turn sour? Because in the instance of Fiercombe Manor I could tell Riordan was trying to emulate Du Maurier, but there are other books compared to Rebecca that just have a similar feel without trying to BE it. Over on Goodreads there's a list that actually recommends Nine Coaches Waiting as a read-a-like, and here I'd agree. Same vibe without any authorial delusions that lead to disappointments. Originality while maintaining the proper "Rebecca" mood is the line that needs to be walked. So publishers, be careful in your blurbs, they could alienate your readers.

Belabouring this whole Rebecca vibe, because I'm totally going to eventually just go out and get a stick and start hitting this book, I have to go back into how Riordan captures the sense of place; that little valley somewhere in Gloucestershire. Or should I say how she fails to capture the sense of place. She needed to draw herself a freakin' map. I am not joking. While Du Maurier had the benefit of Manderley being based on a real location, Menabilly, just from her descriptions alone you could draw a map. You knew where everything was. The place was a character. Now if Riordan really wanted to make this book like Rebecca she could have at least tried to make the place's character stick. Because every time she talks about that valley there's something not quite right. You can never get a sense of it. The new house feels like it's jumping all the compass points, the pond is shifting locations, now where's the road? I mean I was just darn confused. Now this could be a gimmick, disorient your readers and maybe you can trick them into thinking it's Gothic and it's supernatural elements at work. I call foul. Some of the best Gothic writing out there I can picture perfectly. How Hill House sits just so with the drive coming right up to the door after passing through the gates with the hills behind. Manderley and how the new rooms face away from the sea... details don't take away from your story, they add to it. Just add it right.

Yet I think the key to Fiercombe Manor is that unless you are pregnant this book is not scary at all. Seriously. Not. One. Scare. There's no ominous vibe, there's nothing. Oh, should I count that random thunderstorm? No, because it was just a little thunder! So what have we got for the Gothic in this book? An outcast heroine, a "haunted" house, and babies... um... seriously? And totally not in the right proportions. I'm not joking when I say that there is more time spent with Alice cleaning silver than there is in actually trying to discover what the secrets of the house are. And you know what the secret is in the end? This is a sad tale of a wife who was depressive with a large helping of children issues, from dead babies to postpartum depression that is treated in insane asylums... So at the end of the day, you're not chilled from the spectres of dead children, you're just sad. Sad that what happens to a woman before and after pregnancy wasn't understood at the turn of the last century. Also, let's be honest, it wasn't really understood when Alice was pregnant in the thirties either. This is a book that has the mindset of today being thrust back in time. Just like I had similar issues with Angelica because of this, I feel that this book just didn't live up to it's potential. But stripping it down, seeing what it's skeleton is, I can't really see how it could have become a successful Gothic tale. It was just sadness and melancholy, and seeing as that was what I was trying to escape from... yeah, not the book for me.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Daphne Du Maurier, Fiercombe Manor, Going Gothic, Goodreads, Kate Riordan, Manderley, Mary Stewart, Menabilly, Nine Coaches Waiting, Pregnancy, Read-A-Like, Rebecca, Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
Published by: Virago Press
Publication Date: 1938
Format: Paperback, 448 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and chain upon the gate... Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done."

As she looks back on the twists and turns that brought her to Manderley, the second Mrs. de Winter can't help but wonder how her life ended up as it did. She had resigned herself to an existence as a paid companion trailing behind whomever had hired her, the reprehensible Mrs. Van Hoppper being her employer at the beginning of her story. That all changed when Maxim de Winter entered her life in his fast car. He was in the south of France fleeing the memories of his dead wife Rebecca and the one thing that blotted her out was the young girl who would become his second wife. Yet perhaps their union was foolish, or Maxim's dream to return to Manderley was unwise. Because back in England their life is haunted by the memories of his first wife, Rebecca. The specter that is hallowed by the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, and is a constant comparative presence for the new wife. Could Rebecca destroy their happiness from beyond the grave? Or will Rebecca need a little assistance from Mrs. Danvers?

When I was young my mother subscribed to The Franklin Library Mystery Masterpieces. Each month a new book would arrive and we'd set it in pride of place on our console bookshelf that housed our most prized possessions, this being the eighties it mainly housed records and our record player. The little nine year old that I was loved that each month another volume would come and expand the display on that orangey wood that just glowed with an inner light. Then one day The Franklin Library sent us the biggest box I had ever seen. They were discontinuing the Mystery Masterpieces and they sent us the remaining volumes all at once. At this time we probably had only ten volumes, so forty-two books showed up one day to our great astonishment and delight.

Until recently these books have been packed away as self space was scare; all but a few choice volumes which I had secreted away. When I was young I loved to spend time reading the spines and looking at the pictures and wondering what the books were about and making up my own stories, especially about The Thirty-Nine Steps, which really disappointed me when I found out what it was really about. When they first arrived I was too young to read most of the titles, and when I was older I was too into movies to bother with books. That all changed. Obviously. But Rebecca, the movie, was like a gateway drug. I adored the film and then I looked on our shelf. There was Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, one of the first books we'd gotten in this series, after the obligatory Agatha Christie volume that is. This particular edition would make it's way into my library and my heart.

Rebecca is that rare book that cries out to be read and re-read over and over again, each time a different interpretation and meaning unearthed. The opening line that transports you, like a dream, to Manderley. You can get lost in the happy valley among the flowers and never want to return from those magical pages. But I don't think that you truly get the book's greatness without knowing the context of Du Maurier's world, mainly her obsession with the Brontes. This is much in the vein of why people don't realize the genius of Northanger Abbey, which is a parody of the Gothic genre, not "serious" like Austen's other books! Du Maurier's first book, The Loving Spirit, takes it's name from a poem by Emily Bronte. More then twenty years after writing Rebecca her misguided biography on Branwell Bronte was published and forever secured her connection to them. Therefore the echoes of Jane Eyre that haunt Rebecca should not be thought a surprise or the least bit unintentional. Du Maurier was writing a new classic that would pay homage to and reflect Jane Eyre. A Jane Eyre for modern sensibilities, if you will.

Just as Jamaica Inn is the Wuthering Heights, so is Rebecca to Jane Eyre, just look at the similarities. The naive young girl ready for love, the misanthropic hero, the crazy wife, the destructive fire. What amazes me is that if you look at just the building blocks of these books they should be eerily similar, yet they aren't. Each book is a classic in it's own right, but the ghost of Jane Eyre isn't the only ghost that Rebecca tackles, after all there is Rebecca herself. While there is that chilling line delivered by Mrs. Danvers "Do you think the dead come back and watch the living?" What we think of as ghosts can take many forms. There are no spectral apparitions here, no things that go bump in the night, but that doesn't mean Rebecca doesn't haunt Manderley.

Rebecca recurs persistently in the consciousness of the second Mrs. de Winter causing her distress and anxiety, but she is also the bosom friend of Mrs. Danvers. Mrs. Danvers, more then anyone, works to keep Rebecca alive and in doing so makes her specter part of the foundation of Manderley itself. This is an interesting conceit on Du Maurier's part, because really, this is a ghost story without a ghost. The memory and emotion left behind is what haunts us, and if anyone could do this, it's Rebecca. As Captain Jack Harkness said on Torchwood, "Human emotion is energy. You can't always see it or hear it, but you can feel it. Ever had deja vu? Felt someone walk over your grave? Ever felt someone behind you in an empty room? Well there was. There always is."

Yet Rebecca isn't the only ghost. There's another person who haunts Manderley, she is always there, ever present, but in the shadow of Rebecca. I am of course talking about the second Mrs. de Winter. She is but mere shadow, a trace, a semblance of a person. She in fact has no name but that which Rebecca had, Mrs. de Winter. This is the most fascinating aspect of the book and many others have discussed it's importance, that the heroine has no name. One result of this namlessness is that she is a ghost, a cipher, a way to tell Rebecca's story through new eyes but without complicating the matter by creating a character with backbone.

Of course this is a two edged sword, on the one hand Du Maurier is pushing the second Mrs. de Winter into the background, but on the other hand by creating a blank slate, a character who has no real "character" we are able to put ourselves more easily into her shoes. This literary trick, I mean, really, I want to stand and applaud Du Maurier. By giving use this conduit there are so many ramifications to the narrative. By being one with the second Mrs. de Winter you therefore embrace Maxim, her husband, and therefore not just identify but condone his actions. The genius of Rebecca is that Daphne Du Maurier has made you complicit in murder and you loved every second of it.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Daphne Du Maurier, Du Maurier December Deux, Emily Bronte, Franklin Library, Jane Austen, Jane Eyre, Manderley, Maxim de Winter, Mrs. Danvers, Northanger Abbey, Rebecca, Torchwood

Rebecca
Based on the Book by Daphne Du Maurier
Starring: Emilia Fox, Charles Dance, Faye Dunaway, John Horsley, Jonathan Stokes, Diana Rigg, Tom Chadbon, Geraldine James, Denis Lill, John Branwell, Jonathan Cake, Kelly Reilly, Anthony Bate, Ian McDiarmid, Timothy West, and Lucy Cohu
Release Date: April 13th, 1997
Rating: ★
To Buy

The gregarious Mrs. Van Hopper has hired herself a mousy little companion to accompany her to Monte Carlo. Yet she's put out that the old crowd aren't around and then laid up with a sniffle. Her young companion uses this time to become close to the one person in Monte Mrs. Van Hopper is fascinated with, Maxim de Winter, the inconsolable widow and owner of the great house Manderley. When Mrs. Van Hopper decides to decamp Maxim gives the little mouse a choice, go to New York with her employer or come to Manderley with him as his wife. It isn't a hard choice to embrace being the second Mrs. de Winter, a choice that even Mrs. Van Hopper approves, because at least someone bagged him. Back at his luxurious estate in England Maxim's young new wife feels that the shadow of his first wife, Rebecca looms large. But even despite the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, and her doom and gloom, nothing can stop the newlyweds love for each other. That is unless Maxim is still in love with Rebecca... the discovery of Rebecca's scuttled boat in the bay will try their relationship, destroying everything or bringing them closer together.

The 1996-1997 season of Masterpiece Theatre was rare for me in that I caught it entirely. I was taking a year off before college and therefore had time to luxuriate in my much loved passions of reading and watching miniseries. The adaptation of Nostromo starring Colin Firth and A Royal Scandal starring Richard E. Grant were highlights that year. In fact when I recently learned A Royal Scandal was an extra on The Queen's Sister I instantly bought the DVD, despite my dislike of The Queen's Sister. Now if they'd just release Nostromo on anything other than VHS I'd be set because I'm seriously dying with only my old taped copy. But what I wasn't looking forward to was the season ending remake of Rebecca. This was at the height of my Hitchcock fanaticism, having taken film classes in high school and planning on taking more in college, and I couldn't comprehend why anyone would remake a classic.

Yes, Hitchcock didn't get it 100% right, but you can not deny that Laurence Olivier IS Maxim de Winter. It won best picture at the Oscars! So I planned to boycott the remake. The problem when living with your parents is that they have their own opinions on what they want to watch and seeing some of Rebecca turned out to be unavoidable. What little I saw made me instantly withdraw from the television room. My mom didn't last very long either, despite her love of Diana Rigg. For almost twenty years I have shunned this adaptation from those few glimpses. So I thought perhaps I should give it a second chance. Maybe Diana Rigg could be a superior Mrs. Danvers? Perhaps the beauty of Manderley would be done more justice in color with it's lush abundant floral growth? Or perhaps I should have trusted my gut reaction and avoided this piece of crap entirely.

What is striking about this adaptation is they have assembled some of the most talented actors in the British Isles and beyond and somehow sucked the life out of them. If it weren't for Faye Dunaway and Jonathan Cake I don't think a single line would have been uttered above a dull monotone. Rebecca is full of emotion and passion, both repressed and on full display, and yet here it comes across as the most flat and emotionless story ever. It should be turbulent and forceful like the sea, not fake and false like that shitty shack that was slapped together on the beach. After the first episode my dislike became more and more audible. Three hours and nothing went right. I was visibly cringing at all that they got wrong. The second Mrs. de Winter isn't just shy with a can do attitude but meek! Oh the rage! But even if I hadn't been comparing it to the book, it was awful. I kept making myself step back and think, if I hadn't read the book would I enjoy this? The answer was no time and time again.

While the heavy handed foreshadowing might have been driving me loopy, if Du Maurier was still alive I know what she'd hate most... they made this adaptation into a romance. Yes, there are romantic elements in Rebecca, but that is NOT what the book is. The moniker of "Romance Writer" hung around Du Maurier's neck like a millstone her entire life. To have her greatest novel reduced to being nothing more than a romance. No. She would have snapped. Plus, I like Charles Dance very much, don't get me wrong, his performance of himself in Jam and Jerusalem, Clatterford stateside, is one of my favorite cameos on TV ever; but to see him groping and pawing awkwardly at Emilia Fox's cheek and sucking her face so that it looks like he's eating her. Eww. The book STRONGLY hints that the de Winters had a sexless marriage and yet here the demonstrative affection is overwhelming. It's the exact opposite of the book, yet oddly passionless. And that lame excuse made for their lack of children? Like Maxim would run into a burning building to save Mrs. Danvers! NO!

Yet, I have to give props where props are due. These go to Diana Rigg and Jonathan Cake, Mrs. Danvers and Jack Favell, Rebecca's blackmailing cousin, respectively. I think these two actually read the source material, which Arthur Hopcraft obviously didn't when adapting this because who would purposefully change the famous introductory chapter and slap it into an upbeat coda? But enough about Arthur Hopcraft because this obviously ended his career if you check out IMDB. As for Hitchcock he proves that even the greats can get it wrong and he just didn't get Mrs. Danvers, and went camp and over the top. Diana Rigg nails it. The sadness that is behind that stiff facade. As for Cake, I don't think I can pay him a higher compliment than saying I really thought he WAS Favell. Rigg and Cake got the menacing down perfectly. Yet they also had the depth Du Maurier demanded of these characters. While they had the menace, they also had the vulnerability, and ultimately the patheticness of these two and how hollow their last act, destroying Manderley, really is.

But in the end, seeing as this miniseries was called Rebecca, you'd think they'd at least get her right? Yet they didn't. It's almost as if Rebecca is an afterthought. She should be front and center, there, oppressing Maxim and his new wife every single second of their time at Manderley, but she's oddly not there. It's like Mrs. Danvers and Jack Favell are the only ones who remember and it's only when they are around that Rebecca still lives. Otherwise it's as if she's long dead and long gone, not "haunting" them as should be the case. But this couldn't very well have been a romance if they concentrated on the Gothic nature of the book with Rebecca haunting Manderley now could it? As for when Rebecca actually appears... she's impressionistic and the camera is just too fucking close to her face. I wouldn't know it was Lucy Cohu, an actress I quite like, if it wasn't for the credits. Therefore we can say that like the book, there's a problem with Rebecca. Here it's her irrelevancy, there it's her possession of you body and soul. Let the book possess you and avoid this catastrophe. 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Charles Dance, Colin Firth, Daphne Du Maurier, Diana Rigg, Du Maurier December Deux, Emilia Fox, Hitchcock, Jonathan Cake, Manderley, Masterpiece Theater, Mrs. Danvers, Rebecca, Richard E. Grant

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
Published by: Virago Press
Publication Date: 1938
Format: Paperback, 448 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and chain upon the gate... Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done."

As she looks back on the twists and turns that brought her to Manderley, the second Mrs. de Winter can't help but wonder how her life ended up as it did. She had resigned herself to an existence as a paid companion trailing behind whomever had hired her, the reprehensible Mrs. Van Hoppper being her employer at the beginning of her story. That all changed when Maxim de Winter entered her life in his fast car. He was in the south of France fleeing the memories of his dead wife Rebecca and the one thing that blotted her out was the young girl who would become his second wife. Yet perhaps their union was foolish, or Maxim's dream to return to Manderley was unwise. Because back in England their life is haunted by the memories of his first wife, Rebecca. The specter that is hallowed by the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, and is a constant comparative presence for the new wife. Could Rebecca destroy their happiness from beyond the grave? Or will Rebecca need a little assistance from Mrs. Danvers?

When I was young my mother subscribed to The Franklin Library Mystery Masterpieces. Each month a new book would arrive and we'd set it in pride of place on our console bookshelf that housed our most prized possessions, this being the eighties it mainly housed records and our record player. The little nine year old that I was loved that each month another volume would come and expand the display on that orangey wood that just glowed with an inner light. Then one day The Franklin Library sent us the biggest box I had ever seen. They were discontinuing the Mystery Masterpieces and they sent us the remaining volumes all at once. At this time we probably had only ten volumes, so forty-two books showed up one day to our great astonishment and delight.

Until recently these books have been packed away as self space was scare; all but a few choice volumes which I had secreted away. When I was young I loved to spend time reading the spines and looking at the pictures and wondering what the books were about and making up my own stories, especially about The Thirty-Nine Steps, which really disappointed me when I found out what it was really about. When they first arrived I was too young to read most of the titles, and when I was older I was too into movies to bother with books. That all changed. Obviously. But Rebecca, the movie, was like a gateway drug. I adored the film and then I looked on our shelf. There was Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, one of the first books we'd gotten in this series, after the obligatory Agatha Christie volume that is. This particular edition would make it's way into my library and my heart.

Rebecca is that rare book that cries out to be read and re-read over and over again, each time a different interpretation and meaning unearthed. The opening line that transports you, like a dream, to Manderley. You can get lost in the happy valley among the flowers and never want to return from those magical pages. But I don't think that you truly get the book's greatness without knowing the context of Du Maurier's world, mainly her obsession with the Brontes. This is much in the vein of why people don't realize the genius of Northanger Abbey, which is a parody of the Gothic genre, not "serious" like Austen's other books! Du Maurier's first book, The Loving Spirit, takes it's name from a poem by Emily Bronte. More then twenty years after writing Rebecca her misguided biography on Branwell Bronte was published and forever secured her connection to them. Therefore the echoes of Jane Eyre that haunt Rebecca should not be thought a surprise or the least bit unintentional. Du Maurier was writing a new classic that would pay homage to and reflect Jane Eyre. A Jane Eyre for modern sensibilities, if you will.

Just as Jamaica Inn is the Wuthering Heights, so is Rebecca to Jane Eyre, just look at the similarities. The naive young girl ready for love, the misanthropic hero, the crazy wife, the destructive fire. What amazes me is that if you look at just the building blocks of these books they should be eerily similar, yet they aren't. Each book is a classic in it's own right, but the ghost of Jane Eyre isn't the only ghost that Rebecca tackles, after all there is Rebecca herself. While there is that chilling line delivered by Mrs. Danvers "Do you think the dead come back and watch the living?" What we think of as ghosts can take many forms. There are no spectral apparitions here, no things that go bump in the night, but that doesn't mean Rebecca doesn't haunt Manderley.

Rebecca recurs persistently in the consciousness of the second Mrs. de Winter causing her distress and anxiety, but she is also the bosom friend of Mrs. Danvers. Mrs. Danvers, more then anyone, works to keep Rebecca alive and in doing so makes her specter part of the foundation of Manderley itself. This is an interesting conceit on Du Maurier's part, because really, this is a ghost story without a ghost. The memory and emotion left behind is what haunts us, and if anyone could do this, it's Rebecca. As Captain Jack Harkness said on Torchwood, "Human emotion is energy. You can't always see it or hear it, but you can feel it. Ever had deja vu? Felt someone walk over your grave? Ever felt someone behind you in an empty room? Well there was. There always is."

Yet Rebecca isn't the only ghost. There's another person who haunts Manderley, she is always there, ever present, but in the shadow of Rebecca. I am of course talking about the second Mrs. de Winter. She is but mere shadow, a trace, a semblance of a person. She in fact has no name but that which Rebecca had, Mrs. de Winter. This is the most fascinating aspect of the book and many others have discussed it's importance, that the heroine has no name. One result of this namlessness is that she is a ghost, a cipher, a way to tell Rebecca's story through new eyes but without complicating the matter by creating a character with backbone.

Of course this is a two edged sword, on the one hand Du Maurier is pushing the second Mrs. de Winter into the background, but on the other hand by creating a blank slate, a character who has no real "character" we are able to put ourselves more easily into her shoes. This literary trick, I mean, really, I want to stand and applaud Du Maurier. By giving use this conduit there are so many ramifications to the narrative. By being one with the second Mrs. de Winter you therefore embrace Maxim, her husband, and therefore not just identify but condone his actions. The genius of Rebecca is that Daphne Du Maurier has made you complicit in murder and you loved every second of it.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Daphne Du Maurier, Du Maurier December Deux, Emily Bronte, Franklin Library, Jane Austen, Jane Eyre, Manderley, Maxim de Winter, Mrs. Danvers, Northanger Abbey, Rebecca, Torchwood

Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart
Published by: Chicago Review Press
Publication Date: 1958
Format: Paperback, 342 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

"What do you say about one of your favorite books of all time? I first stumbled on Nine Coaches Waiting when I was in Middle School. It was the library paperback, slim and battered, with a seventies era governess in short skirt and high boots on a narrow path with the bulk of the Chateau de Valmy looming above her. I read it and fell in love: with Linda Martin, the innocent but sensible governess who becomes young Philippe de Valmy’s bulwark against his evil relations; with Gothic novels; with French chateaux; and with enigmatic heroes named Raoul.

Those of you who know Nine Coaches Waiting as well as I will have noticed hints at it in my other books, bits of borrowed lines or names. “No, no, and no.” “Soit.” “Darling, don’t be so Sabine about it.” There was a time when I could recite Nine Coaches chapter and verse and bits and pieces of it still bubble up from my subconscious from time to time.

The Other Daughter was a very conscious invocation of Nine Coaches Waiting, both in the details—my heroine, Rachel, is a nursery governess in France—but also in other, less obvious ways. In writing The Other Daughter, I followed what I think of as the Mary Stewart Rule (also the Nine Coaches Waiting Rule): no matter how absurd or dramatic the situation, the character must be aware of that absurdity and behave with a basic modicum of common sense. If I made my Rachel Woodley half as sensible a character as Linda Martin—in equally absurd circumstances—then I am very well pleased." - Lauren Willig

Linda Martin was born in France and lived their till her parents died suddenly in a plane crash and she went to an English orphanage. Years passed, filled with hard work and loneliness. When an opportunity arises to go back to France as a governess to the Comte de Valmy, the nine-year-old Philippe, Linda doesn't scruple to pretend she is English to Philippe's Aunt Héloïse in order to secure the position. The Château Valmy is located in a remote valley in the Alps and is breathtaking, despite it's seclusion, or maybe because of it. Linda and Philippe connect instantly, both being lonely souls orphaned at a young age. She is a surprisingly adept and forward-thinking companion for Philippe and saves him from a few dreadful accidents that might have happened if not for her. While she worries for Philippe's safety at the hands of his mysterious uncle and her boss, Léon de Valmy, Linda is in for a far greater predicament when she finds herself falling for Léon's rapscallion son, Raoul. Her love for Raoul blinds her to what is obviously going on in the Château and when she realizes the danger that she and Philippe are in it might just be too late... hurry, hurry, hurry — Ay, to the devil!

For many people, including myself, Mary Stewart is known for her Merlin series. Growing up in the 90s when I did surrounded by geeks who spent all their spare time discussing The Lord of the Rings in detail or playing Dungeons and Dragons or memorizing "Jabberwocky" in German, Mary Stewart was the female T.H. White. In fact, it wasn't until years later that I learned that Mary Stewart didn't only write about Arthurian Legend. To those in the "know" Mary Stewart was a writer of contemporary Gothic romances. I didn't learn about this other side of her till after high school when I started reading Austen and Bronte and developed a passion for historical fiction. Due to the enthusiastic following of these books by Stewart and in no small part to the reviews in the Bas Bleu catalog I started to pick up a book here and there over the years as the Chicago Review Press re-released them till I have now amassed a fairly comprehensive collection of Stewart's works. But alas, they have mainly just been sitting on my bookshelves looking pretty. Every so often I would look at the books and think, soon. I've been thinking this for awhile now and still they languished. The one interesting fact of waiting this long is not just the number of people who keep recommending Stewart's books to me over and over again, but that one book was recommended more then any other. That book was Nine Coaches Waiting. Seeing as this book's pushers usually dwell on Lauren Willig's "Weekly Reading Round-Up" I figured the confluence of events with "Jazzy July" meant the time was nigh. So Nine Coaches Waiting is waiting no more.

What I thought was very interesting about Stewart's writing is that she is able to take an idea that might be very gimmicky and spin it into something that works. At the beginning of the book Linda thinks of the quote from the play The Revenger's Tragedy about "Nine coaches waiting — hurry, hurry, hurry — Ay, to the devil!" Besides serving as the title of the book it serves as how the book is broken down into chapters. Each chapter is a different "coach" with nine coaches, or chapters, total. Though Stewart means this more literally then you might think. In each chapter Linda takes one vehicle somewhere, to Geneva or just down the road. But it's only a car that Linda has been in that counts. So the cars act as a literal drive for the book, because unless Linda gets in a car and is getting ready to get in another there won't be another chapter to start. This is one of those ideas that hangs around that cool/looking like a dickhead place on the fashion scale, only I'd quantify it as clever/lame gimmick on the storytelling scale. It's such a clever conceit that it could easily come across as smug that the author was "oh so clever" to have thought of it in the first place. But that's what I really like about Stewart, she never comes across as smug. She gets what she's doing but does it in a way that makes it fun and self-referential. Her ability to laugh at herself and give her readers a nod and a wink makes what would be conceited actually quite endearing.

This endearing quality continues into the Jane Eyre jokes. They are nicely playful without being self-satisfied and smug. As you're reading you're thinking, oh, how Jane Eyre, then Linda thinks it, and you're like spooky, but then her very Mr. Rochester boss, Léon de Valmy, says what both you and Linda are thinking and it's spooky but also amusing all at once. Like a nervous laugh that dispels the tension. Mary Stewart doesn't take herself or her narrative too seriously and you become complicit in the fun, and this, more then anything else, made the book for me. The Bronte allusions didn't hurt either. But there's one author you really can't help comparing Stewart to, and that's another fan of the Brontes. I'm talking about Daphne Du Maurier. Both are masters of the Gothic romance, but, well, Mary Stewart loses something of the Gothic sensibility in the modernity of her storytelling that Du Maurier was always able to hold onto. Nine Coaches Waiting is just not as Gothic as I expected it to be. Moreover, there are times when Stewart reaches beyond her ability as a writer and the results are painful. Stewart has problems with descriptions of her surroundings. Not only do her compass points shift and turn till you're not quite sure what the orientation of the valley and surrounding areas are, but her attempts at lyricism as to the beauty of her alpine surrounds is totally beyond her grasp. The descriptions fall flat and are just a pale imitation of Daphne Du Maurier, especially when you think of the verdant and lush growth that surrounds Manderley. Sometimes a writer needs a little reminder of what they do best and what will fall flat in the face of superior talent.

As for those Alpine surrounds, what is it about governesses and the alps that go together like a hand and a glove? While The Sound of Music wasn't a musical till a year after Nine Coaches Waiting, the Trapp family's story was well known thanks to their music, and the film The Trapp Family, as well as Maria's autobiography, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. So I'm sure that Stewart, in her comedic self-referential style, was fully aware of the connotations she was making in her readers minds. How could it be avoided with a governess in the alps!?! What mystifies me is the hold The Sound of Music has on so many people. So many authors, especially ones who like to write about governesses, site this movie as an important touchstone. I get the cultural impact, but the love? I seriously do not see it. The songs border on the annoying and once they're in your head they just never leave. Plus, despite how well Julie Andrews can hold a tune, I really didn't see the Captain falling for this upstart with a bad pageboy haircut. I understand the lure of the romance, but still. Perhaps it's that every time I think of The Sound of Music I'm back in 6th grade laying on the couch with the chicken pox watching the movie on Christmas Day. I don't think we knew it was chicken pox yet, but I do remember being wrapped up in a blanket on the couch, watching the whole movie, being tucked into bed, and promptly vomiting all over myself. Therefore it's best if I'm not reminded of this incident, in any way, shape, or form.

Speaking of vomit... yes, interesting segue that, but some of Linda's thoughts made me want to vomit. Let's look at her actions first, she is a competent governess, doesn't let on that she speaks French fluently and in fact speaks it badly on purpose, teaches and helps Philippe, saving his life several times by her forethought, including a late night flit into the wilderness. In other words, Linda kicks ass. Yet her inner monologue is just a little too self-hating. She thinks of herself as being a "silly woman" with her fears when what she does is seriously awesome. She is willing to give up true love and safety forever to protect one little child and she does it without a pang. Yet she'll go on about her thoughts being irrelevant or herself being worthless. I'm sorry, but firstly, no. No one is worthless. Secondly, she has proven time and time again that this is totally not the case. More importantly, this is just showing how much culture has always pushed women to undervalue themselves as second class citizens. Yes, I could argue that what Linda does versus what Linda thinks makes her a more interesting character because it shows how people have self doubts even while facing down tremendous odds, but I won't argue that. Mary Stewart is a female writer who knows better. Linda is strong and should be lauded, not second guessed by her own little grey cells.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bronte, Daphne Du Maurier, France, Gothic, Jane Eyre, Jazzy July, Lauren Willig, Manderley, Mary Stewart, Merlin, Nine Coaches Waiting, The Other Daughter, The Revenger's Tragedy, The Sound of Music