Summer was made for light reading fare. While one might
tackle Proust, heavy tomes of history or detailed accounts of the world wars in
winter, summer (at least for me) brings out an urge for novels and mysteries.
I’m now rereading Agatha Christie's Miss Marple Meets Murder, a collection that contains The Mirror Crack'd, A Pocket Full of Rye, At Bertram's Hotel and The Moving Finger. Christie's beloved character, Miss Jane Marple, is definitely one of my favorites in the mystery category. But I'm also fond of Dorothy Sayers; British mystery writers are the best!
Today I
was thinking about the 1938 novel Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. I remember reading the book
when I was about 15 and I thought it the best book I’d ever read. It's part mystery, part English Gothic, part thriller.
After all
these years, I still remember the opening line:
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| Manderly castle in the film version of Rebecca. |
“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. Then, like all dreamers, I was
possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through
the barrier before me. “
And continues:
“The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning
as it had always done. But as I advanced, I was aware that a change had come
upon it. Nature had come into her own again, and little by little had
encroached upon the drive with long tenacious fingers, on and on while the poor
thread that had once been our drive. And finally, there was Manderley -
Manderley - secretive and silent. Time could not mar the perfect symmetry of
those walls. Moonlight can play odd tricks upon the fancy, and suddenly it
seemed to me that light came from the windows. And then a cloud came upon the
moon and hovered an instant like a dark hand before a face. The illusion went
with it. I looked upon a desolate shell, with no whisper of the past about its
staring walls. We can never go back to Manderley again. That much is certain.
But sometimes, in my dreams, I do go back to the strange days of my life which
began for me in the south of France.”
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| Mrs. Danvers made sure the new Mrs. de Winter felt the presence of the dead Rebecca at Manderly. |
When I recall du Maurier’s descriptions of Manderly, all these things come to mind: the rhododendron-lined
driveway, the dining room sideboards groaning with sumptuous food, the steaming tea served in thin porcelain cups, the roaring fires in the fireplaces, the spaniel Jasper romping the woods and the beaches, the enigmatic Rebecca and of course, the
spooky Mrs. Danvers.
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| Mrs. Danvers, played by Judith Anderson, in the 1940 film Rebecca |
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| Theater poster of the 1940 film Rebecca starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine |
I no longer have a copy of the book. Mine was a paperback and I read it so many times I think it finally
disintegrated. I have seen the film many times as well, and think it’s one of
the few films that did justice to the book.
That does it! I’m going right now to order Rebecca from
Amazon. I will not order the Kindle version, even if it's available, because I envision myself turning
the paper pages and remembering my 15-year-old self perched in the front
porch swing on a lazy summer day.
Have you read the book? Seen the movie? Are your summer
reading habits different from other times of the year?
