Another haunting and unsettling read by Dame du Maurier of the romantic gothic disposition and a fitting counterpart to the transcendental Rebecca. Philip Ashley bubbles over with unreliability here as the cynical teller of this bleak tale, which is made worse in twofold due to his gullibility and inexperience of a sickly sheltered lifestyle. I feel I know even less of the ever-elliptical cousin Rachel having finished the novel than I did before, and it is stunning to think du Maurier was able to pull it off so sleekly in this fashion without any serrated edges. To keep this review spoiler-free, I will say little more, only that I found at times the plot dragged a bit in the middle, but it makes up for it in its exemplary and disconcerting denouement. ( )

This gothic book is a classic written by Daphne Du Maurier. I have watched the 1952 movie with Richard Burton and Olivia de Havilland and the movie does follow the book.
Ambrose Ashley raised his cousin, Philip Ashley, after the death of Philip's parents.
Ambrose goes to Florence, Italy for his health because the winters in Cornwall are hard on him. His letters to Philip become increasingly unlike Ambrose telling Philip that he believes his wife is trying to kill him. Philip goes to Florence but Ambrose has died. Rachel has left with Ambrose's clothes and books.
Rachel comes to Cornwall bringing the books and clothes. Philip gets a different opinion of her than from the letters Ambrose has written and even falls in love.
Rachel is always the pleasant lady to everyone but treats Philip like a very young person; Philip will turn 25 in the book.
The book is narrated by Philip.
I won a complimentary copy from Goodreads. The opinions are my own. It is a 5 star rating for me. ( )

Having come to this novel with vague memories of seeing the black and white film on TV many years ago (and therefore having some idea of the basic plot), but having loved 'Rebecca' and 'Jamaica Inn', I had high expectations. Unfortunately, although well written, the book didn't quite come up to them.

In brief outline, the story is told by Philip Ashley, a young man in his early 20s, who has been raised by an older cousin, Ambrose Ashley, his parents having died when he was just a baby. It begins with his memory of Ambrose taking him to see a man's body on a gibbet when he was seven years old (the story is set some time after 1812 as that date is given as the copyright of a book on plants near the end of the story, but before it was possible to cross Europe on trains, given that the journeys described later are arduous ones in carriages). Philip has been dwelling on this image recently because of an unspecified event which concerns someone called Rachel - and the scene is set for the rest of the book, told in flashback. All that the reader knows initially is that Philip is likely to spend the rest of his life wondering if Rachel was really guilty of something...

The book deliberately sets out to keep the reader guessing as to whether Rachel is really a murderer or whether she is merely a gold digger, as Philip's childhood friend Louise states. But perhaps she is merely a woman with a chequered marital history and difficult childhood, who is trying to secure financial independence for herself in an age where even the suggestion that, as a widow with no income, she earn a living by teaching Italian is treated as scandalous.

There is certainly a lot of misogyny in the story - Philip has been raised in an all-male household, without even a female servant, and views women as flighty, illogical, trivial and over emotional, views he has inherited from Ambrose. He even treats his friend Louise badly, and right until the end refuses to believe her hard headed and logical conclusions about Rachel, which he attributes to her upbringing by her lawyer father!

I must admit to finding Philip a really frustrating character, the sort who you'd like to figuratively slap across the face. He veers from hatred of the woman who has married Ambrose in Italy (whom he alternatively envisages as a simpering twit or a fussy old woman among other personas) to fascination with her when they actually meet and then total obsession to the point of wanting to not only marry her himself, but hand over to her every last bit of property he possesses.

Rachel herself is a slippery character in the sense that I couldn't make out what was genuine about her and what was false, probably because she is seen through the eyes of a naive emotionally immature young man. She comes across as manipulative on occasion and I found it hard to credit that her grief about Ambrose was genuine, but perhaps certain scenes - typically, the total misunderstanding between them on the morning of Philip's twenty-fifth birthday when he finally outgrows the legal limits placed upon him by the terms of his guardian's will - really are a case of things being 'all in his head' and not the cold blooded grasping with both hands of an amazing piece of luck (from Rachel's viewpoint) that it appears to be when she returns from visiting his guardian the next day. Even given Philip's annoying character, however, I found Rachel very difficult to warm to. In fact, the only principle characters I had sympathy for (as opposed to the minor slightly comedic ones such as the main servant Seecombe) were Louise and her father who have to put up with Philip.

I came to the same conclusion that he finally arrived at just before the end, and it's odd that he then seems to lose certainty after the climax, but on the other hand if she was guilty then it's even odder that she apparently counselled the doctors how to treat what sounds like meningitus rather than letting nature take its course, and certainly even odder that she doesn't finish him off while he is still languishing for weeks afterwards. But perhaps she had ambivalent feelings about him, and is, as her Italian adviser told Philip, a creature of impulse. Though what happened to the laburnum seeds he found in her desk drawer if she wasn't trying to slip them to him in a tisane?. So the story finally came to an end, but I'm afraid I found it a bit too drawn out. Given the various issues I found with it, sadly I can only award it a middle of the road 3 star rating. ( )

2023 - 21

Hacía tiempo que no leía libros decimonónicos y me apetecía volver a un tema que me ha acompañado durante toda mi infancia, cuando devoraba estas novelas con una linterna debajo de las sábanas o encaramada a un árbol.

El estilo de Du Maurier es inconfundible, no se parece a ningún otro. Me ha recordado muchísimo a Rebeca, por diferentes razones que no voy a mencionar para no destripar nada, y me ha encantado. La estructura es impecable, te va llevando de la mano a donde quiere, que es una de las mayores virtudes de esta autora.

Como siempre, la protagonista femenina es prodigiosa por su ambigüedad y por la forma en que están construidos todos los detalles. No sé si es una novela de misterio, porque hay misterios que nunca se resuelven. Muy recomendable.

Seeds of misgiving, planted sparingly but purposefully, grow into vines of doubt and dread. They slip out of the pages and twine around the reader's hands, binding the book into place so that one absolutely cannot put it down. ( )