Personally I have never finished any of her books. Her most famous would be Rebecca, I suppose because of the film. She was supposedly a closet lesbian and a terrible mother. Very cold and reclusive. Any big fans here? She was a very popular writer.
Personally I have never finished any of her books. Her most famous would be Rebecca, I suppose because of the film. She was supposedly a closet lesbian and a terrible mother. Very cold and reclusive. Any big fans here? She was a very popular writer.
Senior Death Hag
I liked her short stories, the hitchcock version of Rebecca was good with joan Fontaine, George Sanders and Larry Olivier
I loved the book Rebecca and the movie
Administrator
I enjoyed the movie Rebecca, but could not get into her books.
She wrote the short story "Don't Look Now," which was made into one of my favorite scary films. Actually, I hated it the first time I saw it, but now it totally creeps me out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Look_Now
I recently read a fictionalized version of her life. If half of it was true, she was one interesting lady. Apparently she married "SIR" that was on Prince Phillip's staff. It talked about both their adulterous affairs and the husband's nervous breakdown. Apparently, her first cousins were adopted by the Author of Peter Pan.
*yawn*
I've tried but cannot finish a single one of her books.
"Rebecca" and "Don't Look Now" were both superb films made from her books, perhaps her writing just translates well to the filmic medium?
Death Hag
I remember seeing "Don't Look Now" as a teenager and it creeped me out big time, although I loved Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. But that blind woman and the little dwarf
I then bought a paperback book of her short stories which included Don't Look Now. Never finished it.
Senior Death Hag
OMG i remember that film, Venice and the dwarf, scary
I think I saw it as a kid. They think the dwarf is their child who dies or summpin and it slashes Donny at the end.
I must be the odd one out.
I am a huge fan at least I was, I simply could not get enough of her books when I was little. I don't have time to read anymore but her's is a name I have not thought about in a while. I had no idea about her personal life though. I have found it hard to find info on her from googling.
ps thank you for her picture too. I never even knew what she looked like till now.
Renowned Death Hag
I love both the book and film of Rebecca. But I've never finished watching "Don't look now". I just don't get that story. Maybe I should try again.
Some people just need a high five.... in the face.... with a chair...
Renowned Death Hag
Funny, this must be something in the air, because I just found this blog by a columnist named John Mullan:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/book...iedawayaboutdu
(Yes, this IS a complete link--- I tested it.)
Should Daphne Du Maurier's literary status be higher? To coincide with her centenary on Sunday, Radio 4 is having a Daphne Du Maurier season and a film biography is to run on BBC TV. Sir Christopher Frayling has written a laudatory preface to a new Daphne du Maurier Companion and was on the Today programme this week with film director Nicholas Roeg to argue for her merits. "Can she be regarded as a great novelist?" asked interviewer Sarah Montague. Well, can she?
Her fiction makes for terrific films because she had the gift of tapping in to some of our peculiar fears. Hitchcock's The Birds and Roeg's Don't Look Now were both extrapolated from Du Maurier short stories that do touch this pulse. "There is no greater horror than the loss of a child," said Nicholas Roeg, and the idea of the story that he elaborated is a gripping one. Similarly, Rebecca is psychologically clever, a Cinderella tale that implies the sexual fears which undermine the romance.
"It's quite difficult to be taken seriously by the critics and be a bestseller," was Frayling's explanation of her status. But Du Maurier's bestsellers were not so by accident. Jamaica Inn was a "tale of adventure" set in Cornwall, with villainous smugglers and wreckers, and "atmospheric" scenes on Bodmin Moor. It has a sturdy, standard-issue romantic heroine who has to choose between glowering sub-Brontë Cornishmen. (Rochester/Heathcliff figures recur in her fiction.) Plenty of her output is efficient historical flummery. Only a care with natural description sets Frenchman's Creek apart from formula historical fiction.
Du Maurier is being celebrated because she had an undoubted Gothic tendency, and Gothic is nowadays much over-valued by critics. Like much Gothic fiction, Du Maurier's best work deals in visceral topics in a superficial way. She taps into things that matter to us, yet she is simply not much of a writer. Rebecca may be psychologically interesting, but its narrator's breathy prose is oddly witless and wordy. Take a sample piece of prose - the sometimes admired opening of this novel would do - and you will find the slightly jarring infelicities - unhappy repetitions of words, mixing of metaphors, inexact vocabulary - that define a limited literary talent.
====================================================
When you go to the page, scroll down for the comments. Some are actually more interesting and informative than the article itself.
good link Linnie thank you. I finally get to see pictures of one of my favorite writers! Yes, the comments were more interesting than the article itself lol! I would love to get my hands on that BBC biography of her. When I was little I just thought her books were fab, I still have them, probably growing mold in the basement. What little money I had when I was little, I spent them on her paperback books. I should read them again.
Rebecca is my favorite book of all time.I have read it at least 20 times. I have tried reading other books of hers and can't really get into them.Go figure. Loved the movie Rebecca,but the book is 100 times better.
Hmmmm....anyone care to suggest what that might mean?Originally Posted by Linnie
I like almost all of her books. I have never read anything about her personal life so cannot make a call there but I still nhave many of her books today.
Renowned Death Hag
What I don't get is Mullan's assertion that Du Maurier's fiction is "superficial." Yeah, riiight...
Even now, the true nature of the title character of "Rebecca", portrayed only in the (subjective) memories of those who knew her, is an enigma, and her "perversions" a matter of conjecture, including her odd relationship with "servant" Mrs. Danvers (vengeful mother figure, best friend forever, requited or unrequited lover?) And the heavy choices and decisions of the poor naive plain-Jane, The Second Mrs. DeWinter, regarding her difficult marriage to a man with "issues" to say the least....
Books don't get to be permanent classics because they're superficial. They get to be classics because they appeal to some deep (yes even "visceral", with being gross) part of the human imagination, as well as the common culture and experience, and the reading public demands that the supply be renewed with frequent printings. I wonder what Mullan would consider to be NOT superficial?
Not every thing Du Maurier wrote was memorable, but most of her work is reprinted to this day, and some, like "Rebecca" and "The Birds" deal with themes that still resonate.
Last edited by Linnie; 09-21-2008 at 06:52 PM.
Linne, thanks for that intelligent post. Will you look at my question a few posts up? Would love your take, as I really don't quite get it.
Senior Death Hag
I'm sorry to go off the Daphne du Maurier thread but has anyone read 'Turn of the screw' by Henry James, is it in her head or real?
Senior Death Hag
I think that that is the whole point of the story
could be either
does the Little "boy" (Miles, i think) want to have sex with his Governess or is that in her mind as well as the debauched ghosts of the gardener and of her predecessor!!
Scary Story and the Deborah Kerr (the innocents)film still gives me unpleasant goose bumps!!
"shudders!!!!"
Last edited by Harry's Cat; 09-22-2008 at 07:48 AM.
Senior Death Hag
Rebecca isn't really the love story that everybody wants to believe it is.
It is really a study in Jealousy
Mrs Danvers is Jealous of the new wife
The new wife is jealous of Rebecca
Max DeWinter is jealous of his deceased wifeâ??s apparently varied and lively sexlife with everyone other then him.
The book I thought was better than the film
In the book it is apparent that he did kill Rebecca
In the film she tripped and bashed her head and he covered it up
It is tense and Melodramatic and he almost gets away with it
I love the fact that we never get to know the name of the central character it adds to the drama
I assumed it was always about sexual repression.
Senior Death Hag
Im Off to Cornwall for the weekend so I'll visit some places and let you see how lovely it all is.
in the meantime here's a very "Proper" BBC Link to The cornwall of Daphne
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cornwall/conten..._feature.shtml
Senior Death Hag
I thought it might have been some type of mental illness but maybe you're right sexual repression.
I love the movie Rebecca. One of the great classics of all time. I liked the book too but not as much as the movie.
Yes it's ambiguous which is why I love it. "The Innocents"--they don't make 'em like that anymore. SCARY.
I read Rebecca in the 8th grade and was hanging on every word, but I've never tried any of her other work. Our 8th grade English teacher was in the middle of a nervous breakdown for the whole year, unknown to us at the time, and he never graded or handed back anything, and being 8th graders, no one cared and somehow I got A's on my report cards, so I wasn't asking any questions, either.
Rebecca was the most substantial work we read that year and we read it early in the year when we hadn't figured out yet he wasn't looking at anything we turned in, so many of us were curious what had happened to our Rebecca papers as we'd actually put some effort in and we all liked the novel. Toward the last week of school, someone asked what happened to our papers on Rebecca. He just responded they burned down with Manderlay.
He got fired at the end of the year when our reading and English standarized exams results came back.
I quite liked Du Maurier's Jamaica Inn and The Parasites.
Oh and Anne, The Turn Of The Screw is a great read!
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