Rebecca

Rebecca 
by Daphne du Maurier 
★★★★★

I love this book. This was a reread for me and I have to say, I enjoyed it even more the second time around. The author has an incredible gift for description and from that infamous opening line you are completely sucked into the world of Manderley and the de Winters. 

Manderley is the beautiful home of widower Maxim de Winter. The entire story is told from the point-of-view of his new young wife. It's eerie and wonderfully scary, but not in an obvious way. The young woman is completely intimidated by the memory of her predecessor, Rebecca de Winter. The former lady of the house died, but her tastes and influence is etched on every inch of Manderley. 

I can’t overstate the importance of tone in this novel. There’s a growing sense of claustrophobia and fear as the new Mrs. De Winter slowly peels back the layers of Manderly’s secrets. The young bride completely out of her element at the huge country manor. Mrs. Danvers is the servant who runs the house but she remains loyal to the deceased Rebecca. Our narrator can’t help but compare all of her actions and decisions to the idealistic Rebecca, shrouded in perfection now that she’s died. 

One of the most notable details of this novels is that the whole thing is told from one woman’s point-of-view, but throughout the whole novel we never learn her name. She's occasionally referred to as the new Mrs. de Winter, but we never learn her first name. The focus is always on her relationship with Maxim,

Rebecca’s memory, Mrs. Danvers, etc, we know very little of her as a person. It’s a fascinating lens through which to see the story unfold. 

BOTTOM LINE: Read it! It's considered a gothic mystery and if that's something you enjoy at all, then this one should be right up your alley.
 
Side note: My favorite Hitchcock movie is based on this novel and stars Laurence Olivier as Maxim. It's so good!

Center for Ray Bradbury Studies

In July Jay of Bibliophilica mentioned in a comment that there is a Center for Ray Bradbury Studies in Indianapolis. I was so surprised and delighted to find that out, but it wasn’t until I had a day off in November that I had the chance to visit the Center.

Jon Eller is the director of the Center and has written two biographies of Bradbury, the second of which will be published next year. He was kind enough to show me around and explain a bit of what they do. A lot of their work is devoted to creating definitive editions of Bradbury’s work. Many of his stories were edited extensively by editors who removed some of the beautiful language in his original version.

The Center is a treasure trove of Bradbury memorabilia. There’s an entire wall with different editions of his work including audiobooks, foreign editions and more. There are also movie posters from films based on his books and even a set chair that Bradbury used on one film set. There are awards Bradbury received from different organizations and a murky jar used as a prop on an episode of Hitchcock’s TV show based on a short story by Bradbury.

One thing I was surprised to learn is that Bradbury frequently revised his short story collections. He would sometimes remove a story that he felt had become dated and replace it with a new one. So it's difficult to determine the definitive edition of each collection because they sometimes changed over the years. There are also multiple names for some of his books. The Martian Chronicles is called The Silver Locusts in England. Another thing I had no idea about was that Ray Bradbury wrote the script for the 1950s film version of Moby Dick by John Huston. The man had a fascinatingly diverse career!

The 60th anniversary edition (see above) of Fahrenheit 451 (which has an introduction written by Neil Gaiman) includes an essay by Jon Eller himself. He actually sent me home with a copy and I am so excited to read all of the supplementary material!

The Center recently expanded its collection and will soon be moving to a new facility. In addition to the correspondence and materials they currently have, they will be adding a huge number of Bradbury’s own books and other items. They are also planning on setting up an area with the furniture from his own home to recreate his working office. I’m sure it will be incredible when it’s complete!

If you are in Indiana and would like to tour the Center you can contact them to schedule a visit at bradbury@iupui.edu 

If you would like to contribute to their expansion campaign you can do so here.

Photos by moi.