This months pick for our book club was Rebecca, a classic Gothic novel by Daphne du Maurier. Put simply, it was a fantastic read! I’ll say, I’m typically not a fan of gothic novels and the pace they carry (which is…very slow); however, although this novel did in fact have a slow pace, elements in the story connected a bit more with me and kept me entertained.
Without giving too much away, there are LOTS of elements worthwhile exploring and pulling the thread on. Gender, sex, jealousy, identity all play major themes throughout the novel. Of course, there are many gothic tropes being entertained through as well – big mansion, silver, hero/heroine, and my favorite, the relationship between weather/nature and the feelings of the narrator or with the story itself.
The characters all become increasingly complex, providing multi-faceted views on not just the characters themselves, but our thoughts on the characters through the limited lens of the narrator. This of course was a very interesting literary device by Maurier to provide the reader an extremely limited view of whats going on. Typically, The reader has a god like view of everything that is happening, but in this case, its the narrator who has more context into things and we are simply being brought along through her memories of the events in Manderley.
Although the ending was….not my favorite, I think the book was meticulously well written, things connected, lots of interesting characters, and plenty of social commentary on various subjects. With all this in mind, I would rate this at ~4/5 or 7.5 out of 10.