Rebecca

Maybe her name is Leander.

Ex-pat, perhaps you should write it? I would read it, that's for sure!

Maxim's an emotionally manipulative cunt. I wish there had been a sequel in which 'the second Mrs de Winter' grows up, realises she's wasting her time with a twisted, sick arsewipe, leaves him and gets a name!

I LOVE it - I have lost count of the number of times I have re read it.

I only read Rebecca for the first time a year or two ago and I absolutely loved it, but I'm afraid to re-read it in case it's not as perfect as I first thought.

I'm also afraid to read Susan Hill's 'Mrs De-Winter' in case it's awful.

I read My Cousin Rachel earlier this year and didn't like it nearly so much.

Maxim says to her
You have a beautiful and unusual name
She replies
My father was a beautiful and unusual person

On the next page maxim says

You know I said you have a beautiful and and unusual name. it becomes you as it did your father

I take this to mean she was named after her father which is why it is probably a more masculine name. Maybe it had changed the spelling to feminise it.

Love this book . First read it as a teenager and still reread my original copy 40 years later .
It resonates with me so much in Du Mauriers descriptions of the landscape around Manderley . I can be walking in woods and hear the pigeons fluttering and find wild azaleas ............a woodland walk down to a startling view of a lake [not the sea sadly ] ..............a ruined house sitting silently somewhere with ivy and nature reclaiming ownership . Then I find myself mutter those first words to myself

Her name ? Always thought it to be something Latin based for some reason . Cordelia . I empathised with her gaucheness [and that lank hair ].

I am sure it says her name is supposed to be normally a masculine name. I wondered Lesley?

I love it. My copy has an introduction asking which wife is dead, which I found really interesting. Rebecca is dead but has such an impact whereas the 2nd wife is anonymous and stuck in aspic with nothing in her life trying to live up to this woman.

Love it. Her name is Demelza. No idea why but its what I always imagined.

Another one who loved Rebecca as a teen! I could really identify with the narrator, and not at all with Rebecca. I reread it last year while stuck on the sofa bfing DD1 and found I identified with the characters the other way round! I could completely see how Rebecca was suffocated by her marriage to the miserable Maxim, and thought the narrator was a bit of a drip and should have developed a backbone!

I loved this book when I was at school ( many moons ago). Thanks for reminding me I shall have to re-read it.

Her name is Daphne, I've always been sure of that. She mentions that it's hard to spell which is another clue. I loved it at 23 but haven't read it since.

I love Rebecca, I also loved My Cousin Rachel and Frenchman's Creek.
Easy to read, great plots and wonderfully written.

I'd love to see the film of My Cousin Rachel.

I re-read Rebecca a few years ago after having loved the film. It was not as I remembered, much more subtle, but I did not enjoy The Second Mrs De Winter by Susan Hill, though my DSIL heard the adaptation on R4 and loved it. I've got a set of other Daphne Du Maurier books and enjoyed them though.

I hated Maxim and felt even more sorry for the narrator of Rebecca as you realise everyone is horrid.

I first read this in my thirties, and a good friend of mine saw me with it and said 'Oh, I love that book! Let me know what you think!' (he'd read it in his late teens). When I'd finished, I said 'It was a great read but why the hell did they not just tell Mrs Danvers to sling 'er hook?' Much deflated he said 'I never thought about that..'

Didn't the narrator say something in the book about having a very unusual name? Or am I imagining that?

Technically Rebecca is amazing. I'm writing in the first person at the moment, and re-read it every time I'm stuck on a section of my work which is too "tell" and I need to "show" more. It's so hard to do this really well in the 1st person through a drippy pov like she manages!

Oh, and I've always imagined the second Mrs de Winter as a Daphne too!

When I read it as a teenager, I loved it - but purely because I adored Rebecca. I hated all other characters, but desperately wanted to marry Rebecca.

I've never heard of Rebecca's Tale but I'm now going to read it.

I love this book, haven't re read for a couple of years, must dig it out.

princess I loved Rebecca tale to! Also can't remember what the title is but Sally B wrote that book about Constance and that girl another house book, argh can't remember but I love love love that story.

I read it again recently and I still love it. It's not without its faults, Maxim is insensitive, the narrator is drippy. I still didn't want it to end though.

I don't want to re-read it now; I loved it so as a young teen.

I always thought of the narrator as a bit of a wimp. I imagined her to called Joan, perhaps because Joan Fontaine played her in that fab b&w film with Laurence Olivier.

I loved My Cousin Rachel back then too; I wonder if I would now?

Oh there was a Jane Eyre thread somewhere on mumsnet recently which turned in to a bitch about Maxim de Winter.

When I was a teenager and young 20-something I loved this book and felt that I could really relate to the heroine. However, as a "more mature" woman I re-read it and found myself very out of sympathy with Maxim - in fact I wanted to slap him around the head! He is so insensitve, self-absorbed and unimaginitive. Of course the heroine is a bit wet but hell she is only a very young girl and very gauche and insecure.

As to her name - well I had always imagined it to be Daphne du Maurier! The edition I had said on the title page:

Rebecca
by Daphne du Maurier
"Her novel"

That "Her novel" always made me wonder if she had put herself in the place of the heroine.Oh and the first time she has dinner with Maxim he says her name is "beautiful and unusual" and she says her father was "beautiful and unusual" - or something like that. This led me to assume that it was the surname he was talking about not the Christian name and du Maurier is quite a beautiful and unusual name.