Once Upon a Bookshelf

This is the third of du Maurier’s books that I’ve read. I do love the way she writes, it draws me into the story completely. My Cousin Rachel is told from the perspective of Philip Ashley, a young man of 24, who was brought up by his much older cousin Ambrose after the death of both of his parents. They live in a large estate in Cornwall, and for the past few winters Ambrose has had to travel to warmer climates to prevent him from becoming too ill. During one of his yearly travels, he ends up in Italy, only to meet and fall in love with Rachel – a widower who, soon after marrying her, he grows to hate and fear. Not too long afterwards, Ambrose dies, and Philip believes that Rachel is the cause of Ambrose’s death.

When Rachel comes to live at Philip’s home, he goes from hating her, to falling in love with her, to fearing that she is attempting to poison him like he believes she poisoned his older cousin.

While it took a while for me to get into the book, as soon as I hit about a third of the way in, I devoured the rest of it. The setting – ah! I love books that take place on estates in the English countryside. And the characters were wonderful. It was hard seeing them all through the eyes of Philip (the narrator) however, as his moods changed frequently, so he either saw only the good in people or (more often as the book went on) only the bad (in everyone else but Rachel). It can be hard, though, when reading a book that takes place through first person to know how accurate what they are telling you is – because you know that they’re not always going to tell you exactly the way things are, but more how they appear to them.

I loved that I was left wondering whether Rachel was really as at fault as Philip believed her to be, or whether Philip was dealing with the same sort of brain tumor (leading to delusions) that people believe Ambrose died of. It’s very ambiguous, and I want to go back and read the book again to see if I can gain any more evidence either way.

In fact, as soon as I finished the book, I went back and reread the first chapter. Like Rebecca and The Frenchman’s Creek, the first chapter of My Cousin Rachel takes place after the actual events of the novel. It gives the outcome of the whole book, but not how we get there, which is in this case the most exciting part (as it is with Rebecca). So yes, as soon as I finished, I reread the first chapter to see if there was anything I had forgotten that would shed a little bit of light on the final outcome.

But, I do have a question for those of you who have read all of du Maurier’s books (ahem, Rachel): do all of her books start after the story takes place and then go back to the beginning of the story?

The Bottom Line: I definitely liked this better than The Frenchman’s Creek, but not as much as Rebecca. As mentioned, I will definitely be keeping this on my shelf in order to read again in the future. I would recommend this book to people who did enjoy Rebecca and were looking for some more du Maurier to read.

Sir Richard Sedgeley and Lady Mary have come upon hard times, and are no longer able to afford to keep up their castle. The castle has been in the Sedgeley family for five hundred years – and before that, belonged to the royal family for five hundred years. But a castle doesn’t make much income – few tourists come to this out-of-the-way castle in the middle of the English countryside, so Sir Richard has been looking at other opportunities. When a young American appears and offers to buy the castle in order to transform it into a museum, Sir Richard, Lady Mary and their two faithful servants starts questioning whether there is anything else they can do to keep the castle – including searching for lost treasure with the help of the castle ghosts.

Death in the Castle sits right on the edge of being almost a ghost story. It’s also almost a gothic novel. It’s certainly got the setting right – an old English castle, with dungeons, the frequent mention of ghosts, windows that don’t belong to any rooms… It’s just missing the atmosphere. But what it lack in atmosphere, it makes up in other areas of the novel.

Quite the cast of memorable characters in this book, I have to say. There’s Sir Richard and his wife, Lady Mary. Sir Richard is somewhat manic, and (as it turns out) rather crazy. Lady Mary is a sweet, almost timid woman, who turns a blind eye to her husband’s madness, and convinces herself (instead) that the castle is haunted. Then there’s Wells and his granddaughter Kate. Wells is the grumpy old butler, who has had to deal with (and hide) his master’s madness for many a year, while Kate is a bubbly young woman who loves Sir Richard and Lady Mary, but has no idea what’s really going on in the castle. And then there is John Blayne, the dashing young American who is trying to buy the castle, in order to transport it from the rural English countryside to … Connecticut.

The plot was a little unsurprising, but I wish it had gone a little bit more in depth in regards to Sir Richard’s madness. I would’ve loved to see more of the world from his perspective when he believed he was the king of England and had to defend his castle from the intruders (the Americans). It was such a short book, and quite the quick read, that I would’ve happily read more of what was going on in the lives of the characters.

The Sister starts of with Ginny waiting for the return of her sister, Vivian, to their childhood home. Vivian has been absent for over fifty years, and has out of the blue decided that it’s time to come home. Over the course of the weekend that this book takes place on, Ginny reflects on what has happened in their past that had driven Vivian to leave home in the first place, as well as what had torn her family apart. Ginny believes that everything begins to fall apart when they are young children and Vivian falls from the bell tower – thankfully Vivian survives, but due to the accident she will never be able to have children of her own. From that point on, things get slowly worse and worse until they escalate out of control. By the time Vivian has left home, their mom has become an alcoholic who beats Ginny on a regular basis, until a horrible accident results in their mother’s death.

We get a real sense of how different Ginny and Vivian view their childhood through this book – especially when it comes to the death of their mother. While Ginny has always believed that it has been an accident, Vivian is convinced that it is otherwise. At the same time, while Ginny believes that she is the one who has always been protecting Vivian from the truth about their mother, it turns out that Vivian is the one who has been protecting Ginny all the time.

By the end of the book, I really disliked Vivian. I thought she was cruel and manipulative. The way she used Ginny to get what she wanted at a few times throughout the book, really bothered me. Ginny, on the other hand, I felt for. What I really liked about this book was that Adams implied, but never outright stated, a lot of things about Ginny. There were things the secondary characters knew about Ginny that you could sense from comments they said, but Ginny never grasps the meaning of – Adams can’t actually say what is going on, as the whole book is narrated from Ginny’s point of view, but she does such a great job of conveying to the reader things that Ginny doesn’t completely comprehend.

I was disappointed by the atmosphere of the book. I had been expecting something a little bit more gothic in nature. A lot of reviews I’ve read, as well as a statement on the back of the book, had led me to believe that there would be a real gothic feeling to it. The house is a big old empty home (with almost no furniture in it) but it doesn’t have the atmosphere that I have associated with settings in typical gothic novels. The obsession with moths certain make things strange, but in no way makes it creepy or gothic. If I had not been expecting that atmosphere to permeate through the story, it would have been fabulous, but as I had been expecting it… it fell a little flat in that respect.

A short note on the moths – a lot of reviews that I’ve read about this book mention that Adams goes on for way too long about moths and the study of them, but I think it completely suited the narrative voice.

Definitely an enjoyable book. A little depressing by times, and not as gothic as I had been hoping, but it drew me in right from the beginning and kept my interest throughout the whole time I was reading it. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for future books by Poppy Adams.