The story of a shy young bride haunted by the spectre of her older husband’s first wife, Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 masterpiece opens with the immortal line: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”
Manderley is the ancestral Cornish home of widower Maxim de Winter, whom our nameless narrator first meets in Monte Carlo, where she is employed as a ladies’ companion. A brief courtship and marriage follow, with the couple returning to Manderley after their honeymoon. But the flinty, gaslighting housekeeper Mrs Danvers hasn’t got over the death of Rebecca, her last mistress, killed in a sailing accident a year earlier, and so she resolves to make the second Mrs de Winter’s life a misery. She does this by undermining and humiliating her in front of the servants, and reminding her of her predecessor’s effervescence, beauty and ability to run a home.
Rebecca is one of several of Du Maurier’s books to have been recently rerecorded (others include Jamaica Inn, My Cousin Rachel, Frenchman’s Creek and The King’s General). For this, her most famous novel, the actor Holliday Grainger is the narrator – her clear, intuitive delivery only occasionally marred by some odd pronunciation, most noticeably when referring the De Winter’s dog, Jasper.
Rebecca is often called a gothic romance – a perception exacerbated by assorted glossy film adaptations – though Du Maurier viewed it principally as “a study in jealousy”. This recording taps into the darkness at the heart of the story and the suppressed desires of its protagonists that lead them inexorably towards violence and tragedy.
• Available from WF Howes, 16hr 34min
Further listening
The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham
Lucy Hughes-Hallet, 4th Estate, 25hr 42min
A vivid portrait of the reviled George Villiers, AKA the Duke of Buckingham, who was lover and adviser to James I. Read by the author.
Brothers
Alex Van Halen, HarperCollins, 6hr 9min
The rock’n’roll drummer narrates his memoir documenting his life, both personal and professional, with his late brother, Eddie.
