Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Talk
What we're reading

Find your new favourite book or recommend one on our Book forum.

Original poster

Horribly let down by Rebecca

209 replies

MsAmerica · 12/03/2024 01:43

I love the Hitchcock movie of Rebecca, my second or third favorite Hitchcock, and I've always heard that the book was good, so when I recently came across a cheap copy, I bought it.

What a disappointment! Hated all the excessive description of greenery. Impatient at the overkill. But, worst, while the character of Max is slightly pleasanter than Olivier in the movie, the unnamed narrator is unbearable - a whiny, insecure bore.

Ugh!

OP posts:
OvertheChannel · 12/03/2024 09:26

It’s one of my favourite books as well! I love the descriptions of the house, gardens, people…it takes the reader into a different world. Surely that’s the idea of a well-written book? And the narrator starts off as shy and insecure, but develops beautifully throughout the book. Maxim has problems, but obviously we begin to realise why he is like that, and he also changes and improves (in my opinion). Also, the ending is quite surprising, which I really like.

Anyway, I think it’s brilliant!

MrsPelligrinoPetrichor · 12/03/2024 09:23

Maxim is a man of his time I think, it was written a long time ago.

Sususudio · 12/03/2024 09:22

I think it's a wonderful book: characters, tension, dialogue. But I do think that Maxim was a dick. I too read it as a teenager and missed that he was a controlling arse.

Allmarbleslost · 12/03/2024 09:20

It's one of my favourite books and I read it every year. It's a bad idea to compare books to films IMO.

CointreauVersial · 12/03/2024 09:10

I read Rebecca years ago, but recently it was chosen by my book club, so I read it again. Properly! I thought it was FABULOUS second time around. I had missed so much of the nuance and suffocating tension during my teenage speed-read.

Maybe it helps that I haven't seen the film and couldn't remember the storyline.

QueenofallIsee · 12/03/2024 09:10

I always thought that she was meant to be whiny and insecure - in my mind she was about 17, from a working class family and selected by Maxim as the ‘anti Rebecca’. I love Rebecca but I feel just the same way you do about anything written by Thomas Hardy. Classics they may be but he does wang on about hills a lot.

MrsPelligrinoPetrichor · 12/03/2024 09:07

It's my favourite book 😂 The description of the greenery/ gardens which brings it alive for me is probably inspired from her house in Devon which is incredible and well worth visiting if you're ever that way.

abricotine · 12/03/2024 09:03

Er OK, I think it’s a classic. Not sure it’s ”let you down” rather than it wasn’t to your taste? Personally I don’t think characters have to be likeable to make a story compelling.

FizzingAda · 12/03/2024 09:01

Agree, the story is good, but the characters rather unpleasant. My favourite D du am book is the the house on the Strand.