Review: My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier

In my defence, I bought this in 2013 and obviously not because of any current Rachel Weisz-starring film. However, to my detriment, I will admit that the aforementioned film is pretty much entirely the reason I'm reading it now.

Plot summary: Orphaned at an early age, Philip Ashley is raised by his benevolent older cousin, Ambrose. Resolutely single, Ambrose delights in Philip as his heir, a man who will love his grand home as much as he does himself. But the cosy world the two construct is shattered when Ambrose sets off on a trip to Florence. There he falls in love and marries - and there he dies suddenly. 

Jealous of his marriage, racked by suspicion at the hints in Ambrose's letters, and grief-stricken by his death, Philip prepares to meet his cousin's widow with hatred in his heart. Despite himself, Philip is drawn to this beautiful, sophisticated, mysterious Rachel like a moth to the flame. And yet... might she have had a hand in Ambrose's death?

I've had My Cousin Rachel summed up to me by numerous friends as 'Like Rebecca, but not as good.' Luckily, it's been years since I've read Rebecca so I wasn't able to compare the two. Whilst I recognise that the tone and prose are very similar, I can't help thinking that My Cousin Rachel might actually be, you know... better?

I LOVED this book. I've heard complaints that it's very slow moving and I suppose it is, but it's almost purposeful. You can't pick up a du Maurier and expect constant action, violence and scenes of a sexual nature. It's slow, I suppose, but it has to be, and the pages flew past me regardless. The beauty lies in the gradual layering of information and context, each page adding a new shadow and new depth to your perception of the characters.

That's the key to My Cousin Rachel, the characters. Even more so than Rebecca, the plot relies completely on two people, Philip and Rachel. I have never seen such perfectly nuanced characters in the whole of fiction. I feel as if I have known these two people for always - I've been so engrossed in their world and in their minds that I swear I have relatives I don't know this well.

The importance is the interpretation, however. The most obvious question that arises throughout the book is 'Did Rachel kill her husband?' We know that, that's fine (although presumably not for Ambrose). But there are so many other questions as well - Is Philip a reliable narrator? Has he been swayed by his feelings? Was it Rachel's fault or unavoidable? Was the ending intentional? None of these questions are resolved by the narrative and they've been driving me mad ever since.

It could go so many different ways depending on your interpretation of the novel, and for this reason I think it might be more masterful even than Rebecca. I love that book, don't get me wrong, but it's pretty clear cut what happened by the end. Not so much here. I discussed it with the one other person I knew who had read it, and naturally she'd understood it completely differently to me (although this is the person with whom I nearly came to blows over We Need To Talk About Kevin) so we don't trust her view entirely ;)

One interpretation (which I admit didn't occur to me as I was reading) is that My Cousin Rachel is a feminist masterpiece, a pre-emptive strike against the sexist notion of friend-zoning. Rachel did nothing wrong - you only see her through the eyes of Philip, who comes to resent her beauty and charm, and her lack of willingness to marry him. I'm not so sure of this concept, but it highlights the many, many different lights in which this book can be viewed.

I do know that Philip Ashley needs a shake. He infuriated me. Don't get me wrong, he was perfectly crafted, but he was such a naive, wet, sulking little brat.I appreciated the masterful way in which he was written, but that appreciation didn't stop me from simultaneously wanting to throttle him.

Please read this. I don't care if you've read Rebecca or seen the Rachel Weisz film, or you're allergic to authors called Daphne. Go away and read this, and then come back immediately and talk to me about it.

What do you think? Was Rachel guilty?   

Review: The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles

At least I know how to spell 'lieutenant' now...?

I think I'd heard of this book before, in the vague way that a book's title is occasionally ingrained into the public consciousness, without any understanding of the content or theme of the novel. Such was The French Lieutenant's Wife. I'd heard of it, but what did I know about it? Nada.

(EDIT: And apparently I've still learned absolutely nothing as I keep calling it by the wrong title... )

Plot summary: Of all John Fowles' novels The French Lieutenant's Woman has received the most universal acclaim and today holds a very special place in the canon of post-war English literature. From the god-like stance of the nineteenth-century novelist that he both assumes and gently mocks, to the last detail of dress, idiom and manners, his book is an immaculate recreation of Victorian England. Not only is it the epic love story of two people of insight and imagination seeking escape from the cant and tyranny of their age, The French Lieutenant's Woman is also a brilliantly sustained allegory of the decline of the twentieth-century passion for freedom.

I bought this after spotting it (and eleven other books - oops) in a charity shop, despite being completely unenlightened by the vagueness of the synopsis above. Even though I knew absolutely nothing about the plot, I simply had to read it based on how much I'd loved The Collector the year before. I'd adored John Fowles' formal yet chatty narrative, and the way his characters (although dislikeable) were brought to life. I knew at the time that I had to read more of his work. All of it, if possible.

And here we are. The French Lieutenant's Woman is a simpler plot than The Collector, at least prima facie. The book is set in Lyme Regis in the 1860s, and revolves around a young, recently engaged couple, Charles Smithson and Ernestina Freeman. In the same town, there's a young woman by the name of Sarah Woodruff who has been scorned for a scandal involving, you guessed it, a French lieutenant. 

That's it, really. That's the story. The beauty with this novel, however, isn't the plot, it's the beauty and ingenuity of the prose. It's sort of meta, or it would be if that didn't seem an inappropriate word to use regarding a setting of 1867. Instead of the dark, stream of consciousness narration present in The Collector, the narrator spends a lot of time talking directly to the reader, with phrases such as 'you'll have to excuse Charles, he was merely a product of his time.'

It has a similar tone to The Crimson Petal and the White, come to think of it. It's very much as if the narrator is guiding you along, nudging you to keep up and follow the characters. The author actually pops up as a minor character at one point, just to sit there and muse about the nature of novel-writing. It's odd, but not jarring.

It's balanced very well though, and stops short of becoming abstract. There's a definite story here and it's not difficult to follow, despite the frequent musings of the pecularities of the Victorian Age. If anything, that was my favourite thing, and it seems to be what has earned The French Lieutenant's Woman its glory.

She was a ploughman's daughter, fourth of eleven children who lived with their parents in a poverty too bitter to describe, her home a damp, cramped, two-room cottage in one of those valleys that radiates west from bleak Eggardon. A fashionable young London architect now has the place and comes there for weekends, and loves it, so wild, so out-of-the-way, so picturesquely rural; and perhaps this exorcizes the Victorian horrors that took place there.

I hope so; those visions of the contented country labourer and his brood... were as stupid and pernicious a sentimentalization, therefore a suppression of reality, as that un our own Hollywood films of 'real' life... Each age, each guilty age, builds high walls round its Versailles; and personally I hate those walls the most when they are made by literature and art.

I can't find the quote that I actually wanted to share, but the frequent and direct comparisons between the Victorian era and the current time (well, the 1960s) are so naturally inserted into the text, and are so imminently readable, that I just devoured them.

Honestly, without them the book wouldn't be half as interesting. The plot is simple and the main character is profoundly irritating. Charles Smithson is just awful. One minute he loves Ernestina for her little quirks, the next he can't stand the exact same little quirks... ugh. And his attitude towards Sarah Woodruff also doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

The ending is... odd. You're provided with an ending in the natural course of the novel, obviously, but then the author pops up and says 'but because I'm a writer, I can explore what also could have happened,' and then we're provided with two other endings. It doesn't state which is the 'real' one, but then that's sort of the point - Fowles states that because the whole thing is a work of fiction, each ending is as real or unreal as the next.

He's right, I suppose, but I do really prefer a fixed ending. 

It's fine though, my enjoyment of The French Lieutenant's Woman wasn't spoilt by Charles Woodruff nor John Fowles. Read this just for the prose, which reminds me quite a lot of The Crimson Petal and the White, with a smidge of The Collector. It's so, so well-written in such a unique manner, that I really do recommend that everybody pick it up.

Read my review of The Collector.

Review: The Collector by John Fowles

I would never have read this if it wasn't for Charlotte, although I say that about a lot of books. Usually in a good way, but every so often I like to poke her about the misery of Hope: A Tragedy. Thanks Charlotte.

She's headed a little closer to forgiveness with The Collector though. I knew very little going in, but I ended up with a dark and twisted novel that I absolutely couldn't put down.

Plot summary: Withdrawn, uneducated and unloved, Frederick collects butterflies and takes photographs. He is obsessed with a beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda. When he wins the pools he buys a remote Sussex house and calmly abducts Miranda, believing she will grow to love him in time. Alone and desperate, Miranda must struggle to overcome her own prejudices and contempt if she is understand her captor, and so gain her freedom.

I really, really loved this book. The first half is told from the perspective of Frederick, who is an avid butterfly collector. He loves having beautiful specimens that he can admire in his own home whenever he chooses. It's told in a sort of stream of consciousness way, but not too obnoxiously. I didn't quite realise until a good portion of the way into the book, so it doesn't halt the flow of the narrative in the slightest.

Frederick is so perfectly described. I feel like he could jump out of the page and judge me from a distance. I didn't hate him, but then I'm not entirely sure you're meant to. Some of his views and mannerisms annoy me, but those are aspects of his general personality, not his kidnappery ways. It's a sign of the truly amazing characterisation.

And Miranda. I loathed her. She didn't seem like a real person at all, but then I suspect that, again, that's sort of the point. She's a twenty year old art student who's incredibly concerned with the impression she makes and looking down on everybody that doesn't understand art the way she does. Her diary, then, is possibly her just writing as the person she's trying to be, which is therefore why it doesn't always seem overly genuine?

And partly, too, it's been a sort of indulging in wicked vanity about myself. Knowing I am a rather special person. Knowing I am intelligent, knowing that I am beginning to understand life much better than most people of my age. Even knowing that I shall never be so stupid as to be vain about it, but be grateful, be terribly glad to be alive, to be who I am - Miranda, and unique.

Ugh. Her perspective is interesting though, to see her view on the events already described by Frederick. The only flaw in the book at all is that her descriptions of her life before do tend to go on a bit too long. She has a complicated relationship with an older artist and she's studying at the Slade... it's frankly just not as interesting as the fact that SHE'S BEEN ABDUCTED, FOR GOD'S SAKE. 

He is solid; immovable, iron-willed. He showed me one day his killing bottle. I'm imprisoned in it. Fluttering against the glass. Because I can see through it I still think I can escape. I have hope. But it's all an illusion. A thick round wall of glass.

I wasn't sure about the ending, but it's been going round and round in my head since I finished reading and I don't think it could have ended any other way. It just fit the theme perfectly. Speaking of, the theme of 'collection' is hinted at throughout the book, but in an oh-so-subtle way and it's very clever. The final paragraphs are appropriate and haunting, and I LOVE THIS BOOK. 

Read Charlotte's review of The Collector at Lit Addicted Brit.