March 2nd, 2006
World Book Day, fate and serendipity
When it comes to books, I’m obsessive. Whether I’m broke, in a rush or sworn off accumulating more stuff to clog up my house, I can’t pass a bookshop without going in. I can spend hours poking around dusty corners scouring the mottled spines for something of interest. If there’s an upcoming Sale of Work or Garden Fete my dad will flag me on it. We’ll head along as a team, branching off after a cursory nose around - my dad making a beeline for the record stand, me veering off to the books. The lure is not the prospect of cheap books, but the sheer serendipity of the whole thing. Burrowing around in boxes, chucking aside the ubiquitous Jeffrey Archer novels and chatting with the woman minding the stall, who is always an off duty nun. An old edition, a kitschy dust jacket or a yellowed classic can really make my day.
This whole element of surprise has a flipside, especially on entering a bookshop. I overload with ideas, trying to remember obscure titles or an author I’m curious about. It all descends into one Simpsons-like moment. Too… many… choices. Must… choose…one. but the book at the top of the browsing pyramid has been on my must read list for years. It would be easy to march in to Waterstone’s any day of the week and just buy it. But it’s not about that. I’ve wanted to find it in the bottom of a musty box at car boot sale, or stumble in to Trinity Books in Carrick-on- Shannon to find an ancient copy on the shelves. Every time I’ve ventured in to a used bookshop over the years, I’ve levered countless spines from the shelves but come up empty-handed.
At some point in my endeavour, I must have mentioned the book to a friend who bought it for me (in secret) and promptly despatched it at Christmas. We spoke on the phone several times about the non-arrival of the mystery gift. In a whole other country, she had undertaken a parallel trawl of second hand bookshops but never found it. In a bizarre way, she knew that like Tarot Cards, I had transposed the same rule of thumb to this book - that it’s unlucky to buy it yourself.
In mid February, when it looked like the parcel had been lost forever, my friend gave in and confessed what had been in it. Perhaps because it might be lurking in a forgotten post office corner or stolen and discarded indifferently, it was on my mind again this week. So much so, that I did something uncharacteristic and marched in to HMV to buy the Hitchcock film version on DVD. When I got home later on, there was a note from the postman to collect a parcel from the local sorting office. Breezing in, I expected a jiffy bag of work CDs only to be handed a parcel bearing my friend’s distinctive, curly hand-writing.
Walking back in the chilly sun, I opened it to find a pristine copy of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. I’m a consistant bookworm, a consummate juggler of books, but I cannot remember the last time I was so excited about starting a new one. As the frost fell last night, I eased in with one chapter and already Manderlay and its eerie landscape has me hooked.
Happy World Book Day.
March 2nd, 2006 at 6:51 pm
Rebecca is just brilliant - I remember reading it years ago, under the quilt in my room with a torch and golden delicious - my dad noticed the light coming out under the door and the funny crunching noise on a 4.30am bathroom trip and demanded I put it down.
I saw both movie versions this Christmas - first the modern one - my 16 year old sister had just read it and both of us were totally disgusted.
Then we watched the Hitchcock version - it’s amazing.
The insight into the various relationship dynamics is reprodued so faithfully from Du Mauriers chilling/thrilling account.
Write a review when you finish - please!
March 2nd, 2006 at 6:55 pm
Cheers Auds, that’s high praise indeed. I’ll definitely review it. I’m genuinely excited about reading for the first time in ages. It’s such a wintry book as well, perfect for the weather we’re having.
I’ve only a handful of Du Maurier’s short stories but picked up Jamaica Inn in that bookshop I mentioned in Leitrim.
Have you read much by her?
March 2nd, 2006 at 9:39 pm
Just Rebecca and Jamaica Inn actually. Must read more by her - you’ve inspired another book to be added to the post-exams reading list.
Jamaica Inn was very good and I would’ve said it was better, if not for Rebecca. Isn’t that the problem with 1 great book from an author - the next one you read tends not to be counted on its own merits but in comparsion? Maybe you don’t being a pro arts critis, but I always fall into that trap.
Rebecca is up with Jane Eyre in creating the kind of terror twinged with love, that only marriage to an older, mysterious widower with skeletons in the closets can have. There was a while when I was about 15 where my parents were regularly lobbied to go to the south of France so I could marry such an intriguing speciman of jaded, and possibily criminal conjugal experience - they chose to let the fad die of its own accord.
In retrospect, and blissful singlehood (unencumbered by odd housekeepers and possibly dangerous husbands), I can admit to the merits of their decision.
March 2nd, 2006 at 11:14 pm
I won’t recommend to you any books, as you’ve got plenty (read and unread) I’m sure at the ready, but I will recommend to others a good dose of this blog. Great stuff. Thanks.
-cK
March 3rd, 2006 at 3:42 am
Rebecca is crying out for the Mad Woman in the Attic treatment a la Jane Eyre and the Yellow Wallpaper. Bags I a rewrite as a potboiling lesbian polemic.
March 3rd, 2006 at 9:32 am
Hi Sinead,
Loved this post! Also love and adore Rebecca. Such an incredibly well written book which, as you’ve said, hooks you from the very beginning. Don’t want to go into too much detail as I don’t want to ruin it for you but would be very interested to hear your thoughts when you’ve finished it. There’s also a prequel (in a “Wide Sargasso Sea” vein) called “Rebecca’s Tale” written by Sally Beauman - I wouldn’t recommend it!
Alex.
March 3rd, 2006 at 11:05 am
Auds - I know exactly what you mean about expectation. Sometimes when you read an author’s opus, everything that comes after is a disappointment.
I’m also glad to hear you’ve grown out of your Miss Haversham phase.
cK - welcome. I’m always up for a good book recommendation so please feel free to do so.
Copernicus - you beat me to the Mad Woman in the Attic reference. I adored The Yellow Wallpaper and from what I’ve heard of Rebecca, there’ll be some overlap. For some reason The Turn of the Screw keeps popping in to my head as well. Oh, and bring on the potboiler!
Alex - I might have known a fellow bookworm like you would have read it. I promise I’ll write a review. I remember Rebecca’s Tale being published about 4 or 5 years ago and while the reviews I read weren’t necessarily bad, they just seemed to reek of incomprehension at the whole concept.
March 4th, 2006 at 12:31 pm
I was mooting my Rebecca-is-Jane-Eyre-but-the-mad-woman-in-the-attack-is-dead theory to herself and she pointed out that Jane Eyre is itself a development of the Cinderella story, with which of course Rebecca also shares certain tropes - the wicked stepmother, for example.
This is all grist to my mill. I’m off into town to get a copy of the Golden Bough and expect the lesbian potboiler to write itself.
March 6th, 2006 at 9:26 am
I’m another Du Maurier fan, but I think I prefer Jamaica Inn, which is really pretty scary. I read it and Rebecca at the same time - I found a copy of Rebecca in an Oxfam in Bath while on holiday in the south west of England, and then bought Jamaica Inn in, well, the actual Jamaica Inn in Cornwall a few days later - the perfect place to read both! I was slightly disappointed by the ending of Rebecca, if only because I was totally convinced that there was going to be a specific twist (can’t say more without spoiling it for those who haven’t read it yet) which never actually occured.
March 6th, 2006 at 9:18 pm
I picked up a copy of Jamaica Inn secondhand in Leitrim recently so I look forward to that. What’s the real place like?
Sadly, I’m going to have put Rebecca aside for a couple of days as I have to read a pile of Jay McInerney stuff for work.
Boo hiss.
March 7th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
Jamaica Inn is kind of bizarre - it’s literally in the middle of Bodmin Moor, and isn’t even in a village. So you can look around and see miles and miles of moorland, with wild moor ponies rambling here and there. The inn itself is more or less what would would expect a rambling old stone pub with of course a shop that sells all sorts of tat (and the book, of course - that’s where I got my copy. It’s got a Jamaica Inn stamp on the inside!). But attached to it….well, I’ll just cut and paste from my LJ entry of the time:
The next day, Angeline drove me and Patsington to Bodmin Moor, in her gorgeous 1967 Austin (cutest car ever), where we visited the famed Jamaica Inn. In the Inn’s grounds is the infamous Potter’s Museum of Oddities, which is the collection of freakish things made by a 19th century taxidermist. Basically, he stuffed little animals and put them in tableaux, like ‘The Kitten’s Wedding’, in which all the kittens are dressed and posed in full Victorian wedding garb. It’s the most fucked-up thing I’ve ever seen in my life – well, after the museum’s many stuffed “animal freaksâ€? like the several two-headed lambs, who scared the bejaysus out of me (I hid my eyes when we passed “the lamb with two bodiesâ€?, after hearing Patsington’s cries of “Jesus Christ!â€? when he reached it). Despite all the genuinely disturbing weirdness of it, we had great fun (especially when we saw the stuffed “rabbit with tusks”, which set us off in fits of slightly nervous hysteria), and drove off to Looe (cue toilet humour) before heading west that night to Paar Sands…
Alas, the Museum of Oddities apparently moved to new premises shortly afterwards (we visited in September 2003), so Jamaica Inn is probably slightly less disturbing these days…