Rebecca is the world of film-noir as described in a single novel, and it is surpassed by none across the board of crime fiction and mystery alike. Du Maurier as a writer made Alfred Hitchcock the director that he would become, except that the latter always gets the credit over the former. As the reader, you share the same psychosis that imperils the narrator and are just as naïve, helpless and disoriented as you live her journey through grey, somber Cornwall and the silent, enigmatic corridors of Manderley. With Rebecca, Du Maurier transformed the romantic-gothic trope popularized by the likes of Jane Eyre and embellished it with a sensational modern air, and so became the birth of the thriller. ( )

Having seen 3 adaptations of the novel – Hitchcock's 1940s version with Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, the 1997 version with Charles Dance and Emilia Fox, and Netflix's version in 2020 with Armie Hammer and Lily James – I greatly desired to read this. Out of all the versions, I loved Hitchcock's and I don't think anything could ever top that. It is always interesting to see adaptations and then read and find out where they got the scenes from and how it differs from the original.

I always liked that right off the bat, the novel is called "Rebecca" - it tells you all you need to know. This book is about Rebecca the late Mrs de Winter, not the woman who is telling it the new Mrs de Winter. Indeed, the heroine in her early 20s does not even give her own name, except of course the title of Mrs de Winter, recently married to 42-year-old Maxim de Winter after meeting him on holiday in Monte Carlo. All seems rather ideal to begin with, a blissful honeymoon – until of course it isn't.

They show up at Manderley his estate, run in his absence by the sinister housekeeper Mrs Danvers. And here our heroine first gets compared to Rebecca by Mrs Danvers: essentially, Rebecca could do no wrong, was beautiful, accomplished, and perfect, but our poor heroine can do no right, is plain and not able to organise the household the same. This sentiment eats away at the heroine, especially when she visits relatives: everyone seems to be unable to get over the loss of the previous Mrs de Winter who mysteriously perished in a sailing accident. Or did she?

I love everything about this book. So many mysteries and plot twists, all very enticing! I remember enjoying every second reading this. ( )

A plain, introverted wallflower thinks herself inferior to her husband's late first wife whose reputation and presence seems to haunt her every waking moment and their house itself and finally exclaims, " . . . It's always Rebecca, Rebecca, Rebecca."

Anyone of my generation is going to immediately flash to Jan Brady complaining about her perfect older sister and dramatically whining, "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!" Unfortunately, without Carol and Mike to provide guidance, our heroine's problems aren't resolved in 22 minutes, and we have to follow her along for several hundred pages as things just get worse and worse.

Long before the Brady vibe kicked in, this book felt like off-kilter homage to Jane Eyre, another marriage with a third wheel looming over everything.

Overall, I found myself pulled along through Rebecca by the style of the prose, but it did prove a bit boring for long segments and overlong in general. A lot of plot developments feel like they'd play better on a soap opera than between the covers of a book, but they effectively hooked me and kept me going even as I got a little impatient with the pacing.

For me, the biggest problem is the twenty-year age gap in the marriage, which the husband sums up in the skeeviest way possible with this bon mot: "It's a pity you have to grow up."

In the end I couldn't really like any of the flawed people in the book, but I rather enjoyed watching their turmoil unfold. ( )

Recommendation from mum in law. Enjoyed reading this book more than I had expected. Engaging and well written. Having finished the book I immediately watched the Hitchcock film with Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, which was disappointing by contrast. ( )

I enjoyed this more than I thought I was going to for the first half of the novel. I was getting desperately tired of the weak, insecure, silly schoolgirl of a narrator. What kept me going was the vivid, sometimes insightful daydreams of the narrator. At least when she wasn’t wallowing in her paranoia and insecurity. For instance, when she’s visiting Maxim’s grandmother:

Maxim’s grandmother suffered her in patience. She closed her eyes as though she too were tired. She looked more like Maxim than ever. I knew how she must have looked when she was young, tall, and handsome, going round to the stables at Manderley with sugar in her pockets, holding her trailing skirt out of the mud. I pictured the nipped-in waist, the high collar, I heard her ordering the carriage for two o’clock. That was all finished now for her, all gone. Her husband had been dead for forty years, her son for fifteen. She had to live in this bright, red-gabled house with the nurse until it was time for her to die. I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people.

The last quarter or so of the novel had me turning pages to find to what was going to happen, but it read very much like an Alfred Hitchcock thriller, and I much preferred the more introspective sections. The ending sent me back to reread the beginning, made so much more poignant the second time around. But, wow, I need to read a feminist analysis of this book. And how about that Mrs. Danvers, right? ( )