This was very good; neither Paddy nor I had read it before, but it is a rattlingly good plot with bits of Jane Eyre influence.
A gauche and young unnamed (we think) narrator/heroine meets a wealthy middle aged man in Monte Carlo, and falls in love with him, partly to escape circumstances and the silly old woman to whom she is engaged as ‘companion’.
Maxime de Winter is a wealthy Englishman with a country house in the West country called Manderley, and is mourning the death of his first wife Rebecca. The couple quickly marry and return to Manderley, a house presided over by the spirit of Rebecca, and in which the narrator is never able to settle, mainly due to the apparently malign influence of Mrs Danvers, the head servant, who is fiercely loyal to Rebecca.
All, of course, is not as it seems and the plot takes us on a real rollercoaster towards the end. Very good – must be a film, although I have never seen it.
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