Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, reviewed by Eva Leung

The UK first edition, hardback of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

The UK first edition, paperback of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Genre: Contemporary novel, mystery, gothic, thriller, crime fiction, NOT romance
Original Publication: August 1938

This could have been a Cinderella fairytale: a poor, shy young woman marries the wealthy man she falls in love with and lives with him in the beautiful Manderley, the mansion so grand that it is featured on postcards.

Except that it is not; it is not even a love story – as Daphne du Maurier repeatedly announced, this is a study in jealousy.  Maxim de Winter is a widower, and everyone tells the new Mrs de Winter that he cannot get over the death of his first wife, Rebecca.  Beautiful, confident, and extremely capable with an upper-middle-class background, Rebecca was everything the unnamed heroine is not.  She knows she will always be the "second" Mrs de Winter, living under the shadow of Rebecca, who, even after her death, continues to be the mistress of Manderley.

Rebecca was the book that introduced me to Daphne du Maurier – an experience many readers share.  I was 14 or 15, and it was one of the Literature syllabus texts where the book would not be taught in class, but we were to read the book ourselves and sit for the exam.  I devoured the book in one day and have been hooked ever since.  I can't remember how many times I have reread the book.

Daphne du Maurier is told that critics will never forgive her for having written Rebecca, and as it turns out, Rebecca is indeed both a curse and a blessing for her.  The lasting commercial success and literary appeal of the novel have given her fame, status, glory, income, and everything in between.  But it also eclipses the brilliance of her other works.  Despite having written seventeen novels, six (auto)biographies, fifteen volumes of short stories, three plays and other non-fictional works and poems over her five-decades-long career, she continues to be known as the author of Rebecca.  Despite the diversity of her genres – historical fiction, biographical fiction, family saga, time-travel novel, science fiction, and political novel – she continues to be regarded as a "romantic suspense" writer.  Readers keep expecting her new publications to be something like Rebecca.

There have been sequels and other works written for Rebecca as well as numerous adaptations – films, television shows, radio programmes, and theatre productions – and I would not be surprised if there are more in the future.  Rebecca will always be a classic.

© Eva Leung August 2024.

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