The Parasites by Daphne du Maurier, reviewed by Eva Leung
The UK first edition, hardback of The Parasites by Daphne du Maurier
Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Family Saga, Domestic Fiction
Original Publication: 1949
It is Charles Wyndham who calls the Delaney siblings “parasites”—Charles has married Maria Delaney. He realises she can never be part of his family, perhaps because of her unusually strong bond with her unusual family. Pappy, a famous singer, fathered Maria with a Viennese actress, and Mama, a famous dancer, gave birth to Niall, whose father is a pianist. After the Viennese actress died, Pappy married Mama, and they had Celia. Half-siblings and step-siblings Maria, Niall, and Celia inherit their parents’ artistic talents and pursue their own dreams – Maria is an actress, Niall a pianist, and Celia an artist. But, this story is less about their careers and more about their exceptional bond as a family as they navigate the artistic world that the author herself grows up in.
This is yet another forgotten book, and yet another I considered not writing a review for, for the same reason that this is not the kind of book that makes Daphne du Maurier a bestselling writer and not a book I would have recommended to someone who has never read her books.
The Parasites is not a plot-driven story, and I imagine that an average person would tend to enjoy more novels like The King’s General and The House on the Strand.
The most intriguing feature in the book for me, however, is the curious narrative situation. Parts of the novel are told in first person plural – “we”:
“It was Charles who called us the parasites.”
“We created a strange sort of hostility wherever we went.”
Then the readers would realise there is never an “I”, and the speaker for “we” could be any of the Delaney siblings, but it is never clear which one it is. The other parts of the novel are written mostly in third-person narration. I have never seen any other books adopting a narrative situation like this, and it demonstrates du Maurier’s boldness in experimenting with new narrative forms. The Parasites is one of the many works by du Maurier that reflects her preoccupation with family, but this is the only book through which she presents the world of the entertainment industry as she knows it, being the daughter of the famous actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and granddaughter of cartoonist-novelist George du Maurier.
© Eva Leung, August 2024.