Do yourself a favor. Download this audiobook and enjoy a double dose of Gothic atmosphere, delivered by the winning combination of the eerie writing by phenomenal author Daphne du Maurier, and narrated by the accomplished actor Jonathan Pryce. You won't regret it. Click here to listen to the audio sample.

Philip Ashley, a young man just around the corner from turning twenty-five, has lost the one person in his life who was his only family. Ambrose, his older cousin and guardian, passed away while in Italy and Philip is now grief-stricken and confused. After all, how could Ambrose, a man who professed to be more suited to a life of solitude, fallen in love and gotten married? Who is the woman? With jealousy and fear, combined with paranoia, this Gothic novel satisfied every need for an unsettling tale as the air continues to get much cooler this autumn.

Rachel, a cousin of Philip's from a distant line, was Ambrose's wife and the subject of many a letter from Ambrose to Philip during the time he spent away from the estate in England. While the letters initially express love, later letters describe something quite different about Rachel, ominous, deceptive, and perhaps even dangerous. Should Philip trust Ambrose's letters, which may have been written at the height of his illness, or should Philip instead believe that Rachel is a good and decent woman, who was very much in love with Philip's uncle?

I read Rebecca by Du Maurier last year for the first time and promised myself I would read more of her work. Suspenseful and haunting, Du Maurier's work continues at a slow, yet consistent pace, building to those peak moments that reveal startling sadness and events that require you to read slowly, to appreciate, or rather to savor, each word. With Jonathan Pryce's rich and warm voice expertly narrating events, I was easily hooked to this Gothic tale of love, deception, and misunderstandings, all set on a sprawling estate that will immediately pass to Philip once he reaches his twenty-fifth birthday.

Remember this about Du Maurier: She is not a romance author. I was ignorant for years about this, and shunned reading her work. However, I instead found she is quite the master of suspense and storytelling, and while she dapples in love, it's nothing like what people thinks she writes. (I blame it on that ghastly, albeit memorable, red cover.)

Du Maurier always maintains the unreliable narrator, the main character frustratingly naive. In My Cousin Rachel, Philip is so annoyingly innocent about women that I wanted to slap him. How could he be so blind? How could he so stupidly trust the wrong people? But, Du Maurier trips you again, because even as I wanted to yell at Philip, I started to feel unsettled, questioning whether or not he was right, and I, the all-knowing reader, was somehow wrong...  Philip certainly has led his life similarly to Ambrose's, sequestered and unsociable, his friends limited to the few who are the children of those who have provided a service to the Ashley estate, so there shouldn't be a surprise to how he reacts when he first meets Rachel, and subsequently gets to know her better. The confusion he feels, the emotions he falls victim to! Argh! You might utter proclamations of annoyance, you might throw your hands up in the air! You might. I did. But, as I do with most Gothic installments in my reading background, I enjoyed every moment.

This journey the reader experiences is key to My Cousin Rachel and to Du Maurier's signature style, so mind your patience, as the story is a good one and worth it to experience.

At the risk of sounding abject, I would also suggest this could be the "prequel" to Rebecca, granted with a few characters moved around. With a little research, I found I'm not the only one who compares both of these books as they have extremely similar images and settings, and it is of course, acutely atmospheric. Du Maurier tends to love her wealthy and affluent main characters, recluses living by the cold and rainy coastline who don't have much experience in the ways of love or business. And I enjoy it every single time. The Gothic nature of this story satisfied me to no end. Jonathan Pryce is superb and will not disappoint; I certainly will continue to eagerly download his work in the future.

Audio Notes: This was my first time listening to Jonathan Pryce, and as I've already mentioned, he is undeniably a master of delivering this story. With a voice quiet and haunting, Pryce narrates Philip's innocence and frustration, his helplessness and desire for more, so well that I found I made yet another excuse for more and more errands to do, places to go, just so I could continue to listen to the story. Pryce successfully captured each character distinctly, without confusion, and I'm happy to listen to him again.

Publisher: AudioGO Ltd.

Audio Time: 11 hours, 55 minutes

Release Date: 10/1/07

Narrator: Jonathan Pryce

Others said:
Avid Reader's Musings
Book Chatter
JoV's Book Pyramid
Just Book Reading
Savidge Reads
She Reads Novels

FTC Disclosure: I purchased this audiobook from Audible.com

About the Author

Daphne du Maurier was a British author and playwright, known for Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel, Jamaica Inn, Frenchman's Creek, and hundreds of short stories including the collection Daphne du Maurier's Classics of the Macabre, which feature The Birds, The Blue Lenses, and Don't Look Now. She was born in 1907 and passed in 1989. Her stories have been adapted for films, most memorably by Alfred Hitchcock for both The Birds and Don't Look Now.

For a full bio of this incredible author, please click here.

About the Narrator

Jonathan Pryce is an accomplished Welsh actor of both the film and stage, with a career spanning forty years. Most known for several outstanding acting pursuits in both England and the United States, including his Academy-award winning portrayal of The Engineer in Miss Saigon, Jonathan Pryce is also a popular audiobook narrator. Click here to review available selections on Audible.com.





This is another selection for Carl's RIP event. For other participants' reviews, please click here.

I always put off reading this story because I thought it was a romance. Granted, I based this solely off the book cover, so imagine my delight as I got older and heard that it was instead, decidedly Gothic and creepy.

The entire story is told through a flashback of events that occurred when the unnamed narrator is a hired companion for Mrs. Van Hopper, a gossipy brute of a woman. While traveling through Monte Carlo, they meet Maxim de Winter, whose story is one that Mrs. Van Hopper willingly offers up. Maxim's recent loss of his first wife Rebecca is a sad fate, and as the young narrator spends more time with him, they decide within only a few weeks that they will get married and move to his estate, entitled Manderley.

But upon arriving to Maxim's estate, it becomes quite a different experience than she anticipated. The mansion is huge, with a full staff to keep up the house and grounds, and the ever-present ghost of the beautiful, social, and popular Rebecca is behind everything that is desirable about Manderley, and even the parties she's hosted are still talked about. But not only is she a part of Manderley's past, she is very much a part of a creepy and sinister presence about the house. Rebecca is everywhere that the new bride finds herself in - from the beautiful landscape of the grounds, the cove where Rebecca lost her life, the little cottage down by the sea that she used to rest in after she would go sailing. Rebecca is everywhere, and the new Mrs. De Winter, meek, quiet, and shy, cannot keep up. Even the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers is cold and intimidating, harboring secrets that make the new bride fearful. She knows she is being compared by the housekeeper, the visitors to the house on their social calls, and she can't quite help feeling like even Maxim is doing the same, ultimately wondering if he is contemplating if he made the right choice to marry her.

I loved this story. I've read Du Maurier's short stories last year and enjoyed them, but this struck me much more than anything else and was much, much creepier. It is beautiful and dark and perfect for autumn. I absolutely recommend this story, and offer you up the introduction...

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while, I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited.

No smoke came from the chimney, and the little lattice windows gaped forlorn. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done, but as I advanced I was aware that a change had come upon it; it was narrow and unkept, not the drive that we had known. At first I was puzzled and did not understand, and it was only when I bent my head to avoid the low swinging branch of a tree that I realised what had happened.

This is my third selection for the RIP VI Challenge hosted by Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings. I plan to watch the film adaptation soon for the challenge as well. You can read more RIP reviews from other participants by clicking here.

Did you know? Apparently, the author of The Woman in Black by Susan Hill (the film is soon to be released with Daniel Radcliffe in the lead!) wrote the sequel to Rebecca, entitled Mrs. De Winter. It was published in 1994, and reviews across Amazon and Barnes and Noble are varied. Have you read it?




About the Author

Daphne du Maurier was a British author and playwright, and was born in 1907 and passed in 1989. Her stories have been adapted for films, including The Birds and Don't Look Now, both done by Alfred Hitchcock.

For a full bio of this incredible author, please click here. There are absolutely beautiful pictures of the author on that site, and it's clear that there will always be an established following of Daphne du Maurier.

Have you ever read anything so deliciously unsettling that you wish you could go back in time so you could read it when it was first published?  So that you could experience it at the height of its newness?

Quite disturbing and uncomfortable feelings occurred while reading this week.  I attribute it to Daphne du Maurier's Classics of the Macabre that I received from the library, which features quite a creepy collection of short stories that were released with illustrations by Michael Foreman in 1987 to celebrate Du Maurier's 80th birthday.  I didn't read the short stories in order, but instead trounced around and first started with "The Apple Tree," which was so fiendishly enjoyable that I wrote a separate review for it.

I also kept thinking of how Tim Burton should really select a Daphne du Maurier short story for his next film, particularly one of my favorites below...

_______________________________________________________________________________

A quick overview of all stories in this collection along with a sample of the wonderful illustrations:

Don't Look Now.  A husband and wife vacationing in Venice and trying to move on from the death of Christine, their young daughter, are told by a psychic that she is actually sitting with them at the table.  Although the husband thinks it's all a ruse, the wife believes.  When the psychic delivers a warning message from the dead daughter that to stay in Venice will not bode well for them...

Frightening and unsettling.

The Apple Tree.  A tree in the backyard begins to prey on the guilty conscience of a widower's mind and reminds him of his dead wife.
I think my absolute favorite, and the first one I read.

The Blue Lenses.  A woman undergoes eye surgery to correct her vision, and her eyes remain covered for six weeks.  When she finally has the bandages removed, she encounters all the people she's been speaking with during her recovery in the hospital have the body of a human, but the head of an animal, one that truly represents them.
A very, very twisted ending.  Maybe this instead is my favorite?  While reading this, I kept thinking that Tim Burton should pick this as next film project.

The Birds.  Alfred Hitchcock selected this short story to make his famous 1963 film of the same name starring Tippi Hedren, Suzanne Pleshette, and Rod Taylor.  Rumor has it that Du Maurier wasn't pleased with this film, and after reading the short story, I can see why.  Nothing quite captures the complete horror and eeriness of the freakish assault of thousands of birds on humans like setting it in the cold and dreary landscape of an English village by a beach, the crashing waves in the background.  Hitchcock's movie was set in California.
Although I enjoyed it, it wouldn't rank in my favorites of the other selections, surprisingly.

The Alibi.  An older married man finds that he's not pleased with his life and he decides that he shall select someone for murder.  A stranger, someone undetectable back to him, and selected in a most unusual way.  Pick this random street, then the 8th house down, perhaps this door...doing so, he comes across a wife and her small son.  He decides to rent a room from her apartment to use as his place to paint during the day, as he's fashioned himself to be an artist. While seeking to draw out his excitement of building trust with his future victim, could they have imagined how this would truly play out?
A very disturbing story, and one that gave me quite a shudder.

Not After Midnight.  A British teacher is vacationing in Greece at a chalet facing the sea.  The chalet apparently once housed a guest who unfortunately drowned and the hotel employees are a bit superstitiously hesitant around this room.  The teacher is a bit more curious than he should be, and slowly begins to investigate the circumstances of the previous guest's death, and the curious association that the victim had with another couple vacationing in the same resort.
Although frighteningly good, it wasn't my favorite, and I wish there had been one more story after this one, or if it instead ended with either Don't Look Now or The Blue Lenses.

_______________________________________________________________________________

I haven't read Daphne du Maurier before, so this collection of short stories was a brilliant introduction, and one that I read to participate in the Daphne du Maurier Challenge hosted by Chrisbookarama.  I found Du Maurier to be a bit like a twisted O. Henry -- the endings were never quite you imagined them to be, only much darker and haunting.  The writing was beautiful and truly set the atmosphere.  Now, I'm looking forward to picking up Rebecca, yet another creepy story, and the one that etched the author's name in literary history.

Happy Reading!
Coffee and a Book Chick

Part of the reason why I've been wanting to read Daphne du Maurier is because I signed up for a challenge hosted by Chrisbookarama a while ago...and I've been feeling a touch guilty every time I look at the beautiful button of Du Maurier on my sidebar.

Thankfully, I've read a few short stories in the past day that I now feel comfortable to post tonight for this challenge.  I picked up the collection of short stories in Don't Look Now, which are selected by Patrick McGrath (my review of his book Asylum can be found by clicking here), but I've been eager to read "The Apple Tree" which is not included in that collection.  I tried to find it in a couple of the regular places I go to, but to no avail.  My husband, the kind soul that he is, surprised me tonight -- after deciding to stop into one of the libraries we hadn't been to in a while, he found Daphne du Maurier's Classics of the Macabre and surprised me after dinner with it, opened to "The Apple Tree."

Here's what drew me in a few weeks ago from Wikipedia:

"The Apple Tree" follows the actions of a man who, following the death of his neglected wife, suspects her spirit inhabits an old apple tree in his garden which he resolves to remove, but never gets around to doing so. That is his mistake.

The collection that my husband picked up was published in celebration of Daphne du Maurier's 80th birthday, complete with wonderful illustrations by Michael Foreman.

"The Apple Tree" tells quite a story.  A fairly downtrodden husband is married for over twenty years to Midge, who doesn't quite nag or even pick.  Instead, her very nature is so thoroughly passive aggressive that she simply seeps into her husband's guilt, compelling him to obey to her every meandering subtle prod.

Nagging wives, like mothers-in-law, were chestnut jokes for music-halls. He could not remember Midge ever losing her temper or quarreling.  It was just the undercurrent of reproach, mingled with suffering nobly born, spoilt the atmosphere of his home and drove him to a sense of furtiveness and guilt.

Following a quick bout of influenza turning into pneumonia, Midge passes away.  He feels a sense of freedom, unburdened by the chains of her subtlety that he felt for so long, and he begins to enjoy life.  The crispness in the air is more clearly felt, the ability to go for a stroll around the grounds more inviting, popping into the local pub or to simply pass the time in his living room -- all are free for him to do without any guilt.  Without any annoyances.

But creeping just below the normalcy of the new life he's experiencing, the apple tree in the back begins to be a bit more...noticeable.  He's never really looked at it in the past, but now it's a bit more prominent.  The withering branches almost become more sickly and pronounced.  The apples from the tree taste sweet to others and instead give him a sick and rotting taste.  The wood burning brightly and fragrantly in a fireplace becomes for him a stench that even lingers in his mouth, making him sick.

I found this short story to be incredibly unsettling and disturbing.  Riding just below it all is a sense of something truly creepier.  Into the husband's subconscious is a tangible and real version of his once living wife, quiet and martyr-like that she was.  Could her spirit be inhabiting a simple and old tree?  Or could the husband be slowly going mad? I started to wonder if after a lifetime of something that he is burdened with, can he truly feel comfortable without it?  It seemed as if he placed his wife's existence into the sad tree, that sits so forlornly behind the house, almost as if to say that if not for his neglect, perhaps it could be something more.

What a freakish enjoyment I had in reading this story -- you really should check this out, if you haven't already.  Du Maurier has become a new favorite for me.

Happy Reading,
Coffee and a Book Chick