BROOOOO
This morning I got up and read with a pencil and cup of coffee before the rest of my house was awake, in a single lamplight, in a corner window where FOG BLANKETED THE STILL-DARK NEIGHBORHOOD, CAN YOU IMAGINE??
OK let's go:
The first scene grabbed me immediately because the only other place I can recall reading such well-written, dream sequences was in JANE fucking EYRE, a favorite of mine. In many ways, I am thrilled by Rebecca so far because the inner voice narration is as specific and rich as I found jane eyre and I wasn't sure I was going to have a first-read experience like that again. opening with a threatening dream where unnatural, destructive plant couplings are destroying a beautiful property... she brought a THEME immediately and that's when I settled in and got really excited.
b/c of course rebecca is also beyond and separate from any comparison. the way du maurier builds a sketch of manderley as a beautiful, frightening place, showing us only the beautiful parts through the narrator's POV so far, yet the present-day drops in with propulsive plot hints that the narrator is running, we learn, with max - so before we know what happened, we feel how bad it must have been, whatever happened, to drive them away, for them to choose to live this way, and not knowing is thrilling. and
I
love
an
unreliable
NARRATOR!!!
is she really a shabby dork? do the servants really give her the worst cuts of the tongue and butt? honestly maybe! she does come off as young as she fears:
"...I want you and your company, and if you don't believe me you can leave the car
now and find your own way home. Go on, open the door, and get out."
I sat still, my hands in my lap, not knowing whether he meant it or not.
regardless, our girl is not thriving mentally nor emotionally nor spiritually. Rebecca de Winter appears pretty much IN NAME ONLY at this point, yet the THOUGHT of being COMPARED to her is what triggers our narrator to launch into the story of Manderley and Max . . . every bit of the novel so far compels us to brace for impact.
when my partner woke up I couldn't wait to tell him about the line "And I had to call him Maxim." i repeated it all morning. "and I had to call him MAXIM!" lollll mama you are in TROUBLE.
