Horribly let down by Rebecca

[MsAmerica]

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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!

She’s been put in an unenviable position. She has to overcome the gaslighting and understand what’s going on before she has the power to find her own way.

The 2nd Mrs is irritating but she's young and insecure with a deep inferiority complex before she meets Maxim - and older man who's used to having everything his way and people deferring to him. That's just reinforced when they get to Manderley and she has a very much second best bedroom.

I wonder about her at the end of the book - she's married to a man who she knows killed his wife. What goes through her head when she decides to stay with him?

Must read it again. Along with Frenchman's Creek.

True. It was all about him, wasn't it? Pleasant characters: Beatrice, Frank.

I love all of Du Maurier. I think she is vastly underrated.

I thought the house was in Cornwall?

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

I read it about 20 years ago I think, and I was on Rebecca's side.

Rebecca's like the first Mrs Rochester - we only get to hear about her through someone who considers he has reason to hate her. Neither Max or Favell are what you'd call reliable when they talk about her.

I recommend My Cousin Rachel for more complex female characters. male dickheads and suffocating tension!😀 I love all her books.

Also The Glassblowers if you like a true-ish story based on Du Maurier's own ancestors.

Well, the second Mrs Max is up against the sinister Mrs Danvers - probably the most powerful character in the whole story - so she will seem wet and whiny. I'm surprised she made it to the end of the book!

Well we do hear Mrs Danvers' version of her which is hardly balanced.

It occurs to me no-one's balanced about Rebecca (not that I can recall offhand). Not even Ben. She's either an angel or a demon.

I think I would have got on with Rebecca, tbh, more than the nameless narrator. In another time, she would have been a CEO and had no time to play power games with Max. But because she was a woman back in a horrible time for women, she was painted as a ball breaker.

Brixham

It's stunning, it's like she's just stepped out of the house and you are having a nosey. There's clothes in her wardrobe too, she was tall! Never gets over crowded either as access is limited as it's really off the beaten track so they limit visitors. If you go make sure you book well in advance. Honestly, it's incredible 😊

I really do want to go to Du Maurier country and visit the house mentioned in The King's General, as well. Where a skeleton was discovered in a secret hidden priest's hole!

I wonder if whether you like the detailed description of the greenery / whatever, is to do with how well developed your minds eye is.

I was an avid reader as a child and adult, until motherhood distracted me.

I always found overly descriptive passages setting the scene boring, and skipped over them, to get to the important bit - the plot.

Recently I found out I have something called
Aphantasia, which is an inability to create images with my minds eye. I thought people were talking in metaphors when they spoke about counting sheep, or imagining you're at a beach, or whatever.

I didn't realise the rest of you are walking around seeing actual pictures / films of your life inside your heads! Jealous doesn't cover it! But it does explain why passages in books designed to created mental images of the scene did nothing for me.

It's not that uncommon, and even for those who can create images, some people have a much better ability to create them than others.

I'm curious how this correlates to enjoyment of descriptive passages in books.

https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2024/feb/26/what-is-aphantasia-like

Oh I love the book so much! I still remember that breathless feeling I had the first time I read the ending over 20 years ago, when they are driving back to Manderley…incredible book.

Oh I love the book! But I can see it could be a frustrating experience to read as a “book of the film” when you’ve seen the film first, because they’re very different things. I don’t think the book is a hitchockian thriller or written as “entertainment” as such, though I found it gripping. The characters aren’t nice, and it doesn’t have a hero. I think it’s a very feminist book about what women do to themselves and how they are rewritten by and serve men. The hero doesn’t even have a name because she’s just the second Mrs deW. She’s defined by him, the house and a non-existent ideal first wife. It explores those ideas as much as being a page-turner IYSWIM.