Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (5 of 147)

One Sentence Summary: An awkward, innocent young heroine walks haplessly into the aftermath of the death of the lady of Manderley, only to find the poison of the mysterious event seeping into the waters of her new life.

Subtitle: Jane Eyre got nothin' on me.

Excerpt: 

"We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still too close to us. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us would stir again, and that sense of fear, of furtive unrest, struggling at length to blind unreasoning panic- now mercifully stilled, thank God- might in some manner unforeseen become a living companion, as it had been before."

Now this is my kind of Gothic literature. My personality and tastes pin me as a Bronte sort as there really seem to be two fawning camps- Team Austen and Team Bronte. I certainly don't fall into the former, as I have never been able to push through the first chapter or so of anything Austen (although I confess, somewhat shame-facedly, to loving the films where I do not enjoy the books), but I really don't fall into the latter, either. I have never read Wuthering Heights and, while I enjoyed Jane Eyre sufficiently to complete it, something fell flat in it for me. I think it had a lot to do with this:

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Appalling male characters aside, I also didn't find that Bronte possessed the same knack for creating momentum that Du Maurier had such a grip on. The way she spins out the tale is nothing short of masterful. From "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again," I was totally taken in. Every time I thought that I knew what was going on, I was wrong and when it comes to thrillers- of any time period- I love being wrong.

This was the perfect end of winter book. All of the lush descriptions of spring-to-summer on the grounds of a grand and half-wild English estate had me lying in bed, washing the half-light drain from the treetops with longing. Soon, life will return to everything and all of the intrigues of nature will conspire to bring personality back to the land. I fell in love with Manderley as our heroine did, a beautiful thing to be kept at arm's length- deceptive beauty, a place for hiding things where they would be neglected for lovelier imaginings. Next, our nameless narrator- watching her grow into herself, sharing her (very familiar) daydreams, her anxieties, her child-like fits of passion, made me want to embrace her over and and over again. I felt for her, enormously, and her emotional journey struck an intense chord with me. My heart accelerated with her Belle-esque poking in the West Wing, with her horrifying failures, and her little triumphs.

This is the rare sort of book in which you can lose yourself completely. The language is absolutely incredible, the descriptions transport and turn common-place perceptions into the author's play-things:

"There was something rather blowsy about roses in full bloom, something shallow and raucous, like women with untidy hair."

In the same vein, the changes of mood, the most minute tweaks in wording and landscape, give you the best variety of literary whip-lash. It is a book for hyper-vigilance, for hearing voices in an empty room, for seeing the water move when there is no wind, and it doesn't let you go until the very last possible moment. The violin string finally snaps, and then you are alone with the trappings of the 21st century room slowly becoming concrete around you again. The world you are surfacing from seems so much more real, the world you belong in has new shadows and grades of light than it did before. 

I read somewhere that du Maurier is sometimes credited with the creation of the modern thriller. I am not in the least bit surprised. I read the whole book in a couple of days spent at home in which I was finally required to erect a strict rewards system in order to get anything done: work for one hour, read for one hour. I stuck to it... mostly. The deviation couldn't be helped. I was so desperate to get back into the story, to brew another cup of tea and sip it furtively while attempting to hold up this heavy leather-bound copy with the other hand.

Upon finishing, my wrist hurts and I am content. There is a certain impenetrable sense of calm that comes only at the end of the finely tuned instrument of agitation that is a great mystery, and Rebecca left me with that, in just the way I'm sure it will leave me upon many stormy nights to come.

Recommend this for: cast-iron gate and flower symbolism lovers, Bronte fans, Turn of the Screw fans, Downtown Abbey people
I Do Not Recommend this for: people who are into jump-scares, sociopaths

Note on this Copy: Leather-bound, gold leaf, heavy enough for self-defense- I don't really know where I got it, but it is beautiful and, according to the gently penciled in price in the front cover, only cost me $7. Whoop!

Brideshead Revisited (1 of 143)

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Published 1945

Sentence Summary: Rich people being rich spin in guilt circles until they are saved by Catholicism.

Subtitle: Wodehouse, C.S. Lewis, and Julian Fellowes Have a Baby

First Sentence (Part 1, Chapter 1): 

"I have been here before," I said; I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer; it was a day of peculiar splendour, and though I had been there so often, in so many moods, it was to that first visit that my heart returned on this, my latest.

Downton Abbey fangirls, hold on to your riding crops, because the ruling class is suffering the winds of fortune like never before. We come to Brideshead at the end of the war, and are then transported to the times of unsteady peace that preceded it through the memories of Charles Ryder: artist, soldier, friend. The story follows his continually evolving, devolving relationship with the explosive clan at Brideshead. He is first introduced to them as the family of childlike, alcoholic Sebastian, his romantic interest- did I say romantic interest? I meant totally platonic school chum (beautiful, beautiful school chum). Through Ryder's eyes we watch lives of wanton moral and monetary abuse unfold in the idyllic British countryside, at Oxford, and in the more furtive corners of Venice's canals. Unable to avoid the charisma of both lifestyle and individuals, our hero is drawn into the fold and finds his own nastier bits coming to light as the years go by. Without giving anything away- he finds true love, loses it, scrambles for meaning in the world gone mad, and is forced to find his religion- literally. Throughout, the estate at Brideshead falls into a decay that parallels the trajectory of its occupants and the golden era of the moneyed aristocracy ends not with a bang, but a gray and tragic whimper. 

Have you ever finished a book and immediately had the feeling that you will someday feel the need to return to it for a second look? Evelyn Waugh obviously had something to say when he put together Brideshead Revisited, which is largely agreed upon to be his master work, and there's a little something about everything in this social commentary: war, wealth, religion, morality, education, youth, old age. It makes you wonder- are any of those themes capable of being surveyed independently? Really? Like many things you can read the book a variety of ways- critically for its scathing social commentary or romantically, with only an eye for the beautiful language, and any combination of the two. Waugh is a lyricist, when it comes to descriptions. He tricks you right into falling on top of his ethical conclusions. As I sat in noisome cafes, the deteriorating chapel unfolded around me, complete with the smell of Ryder's fresh paint and the musky decay of vegetation in the dark corners. I believe firmly in the concept of location as character and this book sent that sensibility into a tizzy. Still, however absorbed I was in the characters, their travails, and the backdrop on which it all unfolds, I don't know if I actually liked it.

And that is why I will have to give it a few years to brew and then read it again. I know that you don't have to like a book for it to be a masterful work of literature, or even for it to be a decent read, and I feel at my core that Brideshead is, at the very least, the latter (if not the former). I have to wonder if the bitter taste in my mouth upon finishing it does not have something to do with the split between what Waugh believed to be a satisfactory and moral ending, and what I found to be a very simplistic answer to a complicated question. Waugh explores emptiness on many levels, gives beautiful, three-dimensional tours of dissatisfaction, but I found his literary foils of wholeness to be flat and unbelievable. Am I supposed to want to emulate the bland contentment of those characters who do not seem to struggle so with the state of their souls- our Cordelias and Bridesheads? I struggle to want to because they simply don't feel human to me- they are unattainable, undesirable sterility incarnate. 

But maybe it is the fact that I relate far better to the stained and troubled Julia and Charles than I do to their later purified, refined selves that is the warning of the whole book. Either way, I came away deeply affected. Waugh planted his seed, whether I consider it poison or poultice. Is the threat of what I will become worth the fleeting indulgences that make up who I am? Chew on that one for a while- stew in the delicious guilt.

I recommend this for: Downton Abbey geeks, soul searchers, Anglophiles
I do not recommend this for: literalists, staunch militant atheists, Jordan Belfort