Rebecca

if you've ever suffered from insecurity this is the book for you. The nameless narrator is really put upon. Beset at every turn by the ghost of Rebecca, she is constantly placating, apologising and justifying herself. The most unlikely remark is siezed upon, parts of the great mansion Manderly closed to her and the servants hostile and resentful.
And somehow, rather than thinking the narrator sad and pathetic you totally totally feel for her.

Wonderfully narrated, brings back memories of days at university .

I love this book, I think that she made you feel her insecurities, and her doubts. You instantly hated the house manager or main keeper and such a twist towards the end fantastic!!

Amazing book, but this version jumped over quite a bit of the book and there were parts in which the recording straight up skipped mid sentence into the next chapter. There must have been some kind of error that Scribd needs to fix

Now I know where Hoover got her information to write Varity?

A tortured love story filled with an undefined, creeping sense of dread.

omg so delulu so delulu 10000% how haven't i heard of this before???

I am torn between 2 and 3 stars. I had no expectations for this book, only heard it is supposed to be good. While it was OK there was just nothing special about it. Maybe that is the point of it? I dont know. I waited for it to get some pace and was just dissappointed by the mid/end/reveal.

Excellent book, High marks for the Narrator. The text comes through vividly. Highly recommended for fans of gothic horror and thriller in the classic tradition.

Written in 1938, Rebecca is an enchanting mystery romance, filled with all the intricate relationships one might expect of high society. The reader is drawn into the innocent world of the young protagonist, penniless yet dramatically swept into marriage by a lonely widower. The language is bewitching beautiful and even includes the line "with one hand in my pocket and the other smoking a cigarette" made famous by singer Alanis Morrisette. The intrigue at the mansion Mandeley and the power of the first wife even in death kept me interested till the very last beautiful line.

Takes a while to warm up but a great ending.

Great suspense, very well written and read! I recommended it.

Lovely audio book, well read, string pieces at the end of each chapter 10/10

Excellent. I never saw a movie so was in suspense till the end.

One of my “go to “ stories beautifully read.
Totally recommend this.

The best book I 'read' this year, narrator is superb as well

Excellent. Well read and presented. my favourite classic book of all time

Really gripping story. Well written, and to think, the author was so young...

Truly a book worth reading or... hearing... In my list for ages.

Really loved it, nice touch to have the music at the end / start of the chapters!

I would have given it a 5-star review except that the string quartet music is kept a great secret. Which work is it??

I love the novel, this audiobook seemed to follow an abridged version wich I found disappointing.

I really enjoyed the audio book of Rebecca. Very interesting read! A bit of a twist near the end kept it interesting!

Very intriguing, captivating and mysterious. Though, I don't know why this is classified as a romance, none of that is apparent. I recommend reading the book rather than listening to this Audiobook because the loud, tedious and dramatic violin snippets after a chapter is highly irritating.

Exquisite writing, completely enveloping atmosphere, little details that made descriptions ring true - I loved most of this book. Told in an interesting way as well, very internal, almost claustrophobic when the narrator is at her most anxious. I think it hasn't aged well...to a modern eye I see the heroine as coming off weak & doormat like, her love interest is extremely unsympathetic, coming off as bullying and distant. Having said that, that's not to say they were unbelievable characters,I can easily imagine this happening today, but this did leave me feeling uncomfortable at the book's conclusion. I do think I would read it again if only for the haunting beauty of some passages. 4.5

This book is loved by many people and I can see why. It has flaws but the overall impression left with this reader is one of having been immersed in a world of privilege and dread in which hope of happiness is at its strongest just prior to its apparently being dashed forever. The story keeps the reader guessing about past mysteries and wondering what the future will bring.In writing this review I am assuming the reader has read the book and I shall not be worried by thoughts of spoilers. What follows is a discussion of my reaction to the novel and that may involve the revelation of some plot elements. Be therefore warned and, if you decide to venture further, pass this point in the full knowledge that you may find facts you would rather not know prior to reading the book.Let me get my irritations with the book out of the way before dealing with the overwhelming more numerous and important good points of the novel.Firstly, the narrator. In most of the book she is portrayed as a fawning, naive girl who is too timid to give instruction to her servants and who is afraid of the housekeeper, the forbidding Mrs. Danvers. The narrator’s character lacks verisimilitude. I put this down to the author’s being unfamiliar with such people in real life. Having read a number of the author’s books I get the impression Du Maurier was a confident person, knowledgeable of the ways of the world, and as such she may have had difficulty portraying the young, innocent narrator in a more realistic fashion. A reading of Du Maurier’s collection, [The Doll], stories written by her when she was between twenty and twenty-two years of age, will demonstrate that her knowledge of people and relationships was well advanced beyond that of the narrator in Rebecca. Realistically speaking, if the author was not as knowledgeable as I suggest she could not have dreamt up the character of Rebecca in the first place.Towards the latter part of the book the narrator demonstrates strength of character that belies her earlier naivety and shyness. Surely the person who hides the shards of a broken ornament lest the servants find it could not suddenly become the person who agrees to hide a criminal secret at the drop of a hat.Secondly, Mr de Winter. I’m sorry, but I found him to be an arrogant, insensitive snob. To those that say his behaviour was related to the thoughts that he was having I would say that while his aloofness could be explained by this it did not explain his rude, ignorant and patronising treatment of his new wife.Having now completed my reading of Rebecca I have gone back and read the first chapter again, the one in which the narrators describes her dream about Manderley. This chapter and several other references throughout the book gave me the impression that the narrator had many years of happy life at Manderley yet she only lived there for a few months and those were spent in dread of the Mrs Danvers, afraid of appearing inappropriately dressed in front of her husband’s friends, and in fear that her new husband did not love her and that the marriage was a failure. I thought this was a bit incongruous.Enough said about the irritations. Now for the good points and some of the themes that struck me.Du Maurier deals with the idea of people never being the same as they were at a previous time, even only a few minutes ago. I first noticed this in chapter six where she describes the act of packing up and how the person leaving a hotel room, even if they return to that room in a year’s time, will not be the same person. She returns to this theme when the narrator meets Maxim’s grandmother. Thinking of the grandmother as a strong young woman she wonders where that person has gone and is she perhaps still present in the mind of the old lady she has grown into and is simply acting out the role of an old lady for the sake of those around her. She goes on to wonder when did the grandmother first notice people speaking to her as if she were a child and did she just accept it, or did she object until if became so common that it became the norm.Rebecca is an example of the type of book I like that gives an insight into how the upper classes interact with the lesser beings of society. I think it is always useful to be reminded of this behaviour especially when it shows how criminal acts can be ignored by society when the well-to-do have been involved.The storyline was very good in terms of laying a trail of disinformation and then taking suitably abrupt twists and turns. Du Maurier did an excellent job in this regard and I must admit there were several surprises I did not see coming. This was aided by the wonderful way in which her character’s conversations and reactions could be interpreted in different ways. The narrator’s interpretations were eminently plausible leading the reader into believing them to be the only plausible interpretations. How skilled Du Maurier was in this regard.As always, Du Maurier’s descriptions and general use of language carry the reader through the story gently with on sense of forced labour.I believe Du Maurier’s greatest triumph with this novel is the way she leads the reader to empathising with a murderer and to being complicit with the cover-up of the crime he has committed.

Rating: 4.5 of 5 In-depth review to come after I re-read in 2014.Status updates:8/6/2012, page 78, What's the new wife's name? I don't think I missed it, so maybe part of the story's mystery. Well-written intro / set up, especially to Manderley (ominous), and I could see Mrs. Danvers instantly. Du Maurier wrote the "second Mrs. de Winter" quite passive thus far - like Jane Eyre without Jane's passion and conviction. Hopefully she'll grow as the story continues (and put that old Danvers in her place). 8/11/2012, page 380, Now I understand why Rebecca is touted as "the unsurpassed masterpiece of romantic suspense." Du Maurier's work is officially on my must-read list. Her characters were so REAL - I haven't loathed anyone as much as Mrs. Danvers since Delores Umbridge, and before that Miss Havisham.

I decided to read Rebecca since I haven't read any du Maurier and it's the one I've heard most about. I also saw it compared to Jane Eyre a lot, and Jane Eyre's one of my favourite books. It really did remind me of Jane Eyre in some ways, but I didn't get as much into it. For the first one hundred and fifty pages I didn't really feel much about it at all, like or dislike. I wasn't particularly invested in the characters -- I already thought Rebecca was being blown out of all proportion, and I didn't like Maxim either. The way the narrator feels about the way he treats her for most of the book is entirely right, he treats her like a pet. And the narrator herself... I could sympathise with her naivety, but at the same time, she let herself be treated that way, always believing she was going wrong. I felt desperately uncomfortable for her, especially early in the book, which explains why I didn't get into it as much.

Somewhere after the one hundred and fifty page mark, I did get into it and found the rest a lot easier to read. I didn't start to sympathise more with Maxim until the 'shocking' truth about Rebecca comes out, and he begins to act differently, and his relationship with the narrator becomes a tad less irritating and a bit more of a romance. It did irritate me a little than the narrator never seemed to care that her husband had killed someone, never seemed to doubt him at all. In fact, nobody seemed to think anything of Maxim killing his wife, even though they supposedly acted out marital bliss so very well.

The strongest characters are probably Rebecca and Mrs Danvers. Rebecca haunts the narrative, appropriately enough, and you can see her hand in everything. I didn't find her very likeable, though, even before I knew that something was up. She seemed a bit... too perfect. Mrs Danvers is kind of crazy, but I actually sympathised a little. My favourite characters were Frank and Beatrice, though -- Beatrice was quite strong and nice, though a bit tactless, and Frank was just nice.

I'm glad I read this, though. A lot of the books I've read recently have referenced it in some way -- Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next novels, and Stephen King's Bag of Bones, for example. I have Jamaica Inn to read, too. I don't think du Maurier is ever going to be one of my favourite authors, but it was nice to try.

Sounds Like a Mystery (S.LA.M.) Discussion Questions and Answers

I.DISCUSSION 1/4

• How did you like the narrator?
The most applicable word that can be used to describe Alexandra O'Karma's reading is "hypnotic." Her cadence was lulling and her voice clear. She communicated the characters and moods of the story very well, my only quibble being that there wasn't an English inflection anywhere and the book does take place in Cornwall!
As for the un-named protag of the story, until the window scene, it was unclear as to whether or not the second Mrs. de Winter was a reliable narrator or not! Alexandra O'Karma was carefully neutral in her interpretation, which may have been a deliberate but certainly effective choice. As a listener I was unsure as to what might be going on, just as the character was unsure of herself.
•What did you think about the plot?
The plot was virtually non-existent. The character studies and mood passages qualify the book on a whole as literary fiction. The physical action is off-camera and past tense or, present-tense and low-key. The tension from the plot is all internal to the characters.
•Did anything grab your attention?
I have been paying more attention to the settings of books I've been reading recently. The author creates a setting and can therefore control what occurs within the setting. This prevents abusurdist and discrediting elements from infiltrating the story, i.e. one can reasonably expect that Jasper (the dog) is not going to reveal all in a tete-a-tete over tea with the magistrate! More than controlling the scene though, the setting can also be a factor as important as any of the characters. In "Rebecca," Manderley itself informed the character of Maxim, which makes the ending that much more significant and devastating; The weather highlights the dramatic tension of the window scene and serves as the obvious allegory to mood of the crises in the days that follow; The opening passages of the book itself, paint a picture of Manderley which is a reflection of the pathos of the dreamer. The characters are a byproduct of their environment. The environment is a byproduct of the characters. This ying-yang model is also illustrated by the cultivated and uncultivated lands of Manderley and serves as a micro-model of how the book itself, as art, relects life (or does life reflect art?)

II. DISCUSSION 2/4

•Was there a twist that threw you? Was the plot believable?
Because Alexandra O'Karma's interpretation had been so neutral up to "the window scene," Mrs. Danvers' indisputable malice at that point was a surprise. So much of what-she-said and what-she did beforehand could have been construed as non-threatening, taken out of the second Mrs' de Winter's perspective, that it took this scene to galvanize the characters' natures for the listener. The plot was believable, though Mrs. Danvers' acquiescence in retrieving the diary and slowness to the possibilities of the diary entry were out of character. Mrs. Danvers, up to that point, was a particular and possessive curator of Rebecca's belongings. To volunteer to retrieve the diary and share the information without first calculating its worth or impact was unlikely.
•Did other items in the story help or hinder the story? Did you feel like the author was developing characters or plot or; wasting time?
Daphne DuMaurier's love of the Cornish countryside is evident in this novel. The descriptions of flowers, food, flowers, weather, and flowers, up to the pivotal window scene however, seemed interminable.
•How did you feel about the main characters?
The second Mrs. de Winter was a neurotic child, making Maxim de Winter a pedophile.
Rebecca was an egomaniacal manipulative bitch, making Maxim de Winter guilty of incredible credulousness and, oh yeah, manslaughter.
Mrs. Danvers was insane.
The whole lot of them were cowards and the only one who wasn't, the *antagonist*, was Favell!

III.DISCUSSION 3/4

•Anyone or anything distract you in the story?
Daffodils, azaleas, hydrangeas, bluebells, rhododendrons, roses... in bloom, fading, wild, cut... The catalogue of flora got to be tedious and wearisome. Any attempt to attach symbolic importance to individual plants became overwhelming due to the sheer volume of flowers mentioned. After awhile, the flora became a blur of landscape against which the story unfolded rather than anything of particular significance.
•Did the book grab you emotionally? Did you connect with the characters in the book? With the place? Do you feel like you have been or want to go there?
The characters were a slew of mental and moral cripples beyond the listener's ability to emphasize with.
[It's hard for me to connect with characters that I do not understand. I cannot understand the protagonists because they are too alien from anything I have ever experienced in other people or myself.]The second Mrs. de Winter's inability to assert herself at Manderley, even one little bit, was incomprehensible. Maxim de Winter's decision to bring home a child-bride within one year of his former wife's death was bad form for a man conscious of his standing. To ostensibly "love" someone for NOT being someone else is lame, especially when there is nothing to the new Mrs. de Winter.
Oddly, the antagonists, Mrs. Danvers and Favell, though dislikable for being maliciously insane and boorish respectively, were more understandable. Mrs. Danvers actions can be seen to be motivated by her grief for her de facto daughter. Favell was sharp enough to intuit the truth and pursue it. Despite the fact that he attempted blackmail, the fact remains that *he was right!*
[As for Manderley, I would have loved to have gone there, but it would have been clear that there was a new sheriff in town! And I would have a name!
But if I were to go as the character in the book, I would have to remember what it was like to be ten years old, which is the near equivalent of the second Mrs. de Winter's emotional age. If I were timid, I think tearing out Rebecca's title page of the book and burning it would have been the first of a series of subversive acts. Brought to Manderley, I think I would have started a small arson campaign, burning all of Rebecca's props one-at-a-time, in the fireplace, starting with the old calling cards, her stationary, her shoes, etc.]
•Did you get hooked? At some point did you have a hard time putting it down? What was the point?
The pivotal scene was the window scene. Mrs. Danvers malevolency was incontestably apparent and, things start happening from that point forward.
•What about the use of sex or violence in the story?
In terms of sex-and-violence, "Rebecca" ranks even lower on the scale than "The Mysterious Affair at Styles." In TMAS, at least there were the dramatic death throes of Emily Inglethorpe! The sex and violence were always off-stage in "Rebecca", though the actual shooting was vividly portrayed.
The sexlessness of the second Mrs. de Winter was in contrast to the colorful sex life of Rebecca. It seems that in every way possible, the two wives were different. Oddly, the second Mrs. de Winter didn't seem any more bound to Maxim than before her marriage. They remained more or less strangers until Maxim's confession. And what is this thing about placing yourself at your husband's feet to be petted like a dog?!

IV.DISCUSSION 4/4

•Did you like the book? Why? Why not? On a Scale from 1-5 (5 is best) or a Grade of F-A , how would you rate this book?
[I only liked this book from the window scene on. Maybe it's my American attitude; maybe it's my generation; maybe it's because I'm not a flowers and outdoors kind of person... whatever. I prefer books with characters I can identify with, more action and, less flowers.]
GRADE: C
•Would you read other books in this series (if there are any)?
This is a stand-alone that, along with "Wuthering Heights," "Jane Eyre" and,"The Thirteenth Tale," are all Gothic Romance in tone; mood pieces that borderon literary fiction owing to their character studies.
•Would you seek out other books by this narrator?
While I wouldn't discount this narrator, I think I might take a slightly closer look to see how she might have been cast. This recording was done in 1988, at a time when narrators weren't as carefully cast as they are now.

I listened to this as an audiobook from Audible. It took me a long time to get into it - the start was quite slow - but I really enjoyed the story once they returned to Manderley.