First Tuesday Book Club: The haunting of Manderley

NARRATOR

When a timid young woman meets the brooding and mysterious widower Maxim de Winter, she's swept up in a marriage for which she's ill prepared. Moving into his grand old home, Manderley, she discovers that the memory of Maxim's former wife lingers as a ghostly presence. Knowing she can never compete with Rebecca's perfection, the new wife's paranoia threatens to undermine her marriage until she eventually learns the truth about her predecessor.

JENNIFER BYRNE

Kate, this is your favourite. Tell us why.

KATE MORTON

Yes, this is my pick because it's the sort of book… I mean, talk about books that distance you, this one gets under my skin when I read it. It's the… the sense of place is incredible. I mean, Manderley is real and vivid, and I'm fascinated by books where — like this one — where the character is fate, in a sense, and certainly the unnamed narrator at the centre of this book is so — and I noticed it even more reading it this time — her daydreams. She's always looking ahead to the future and imagining things, and she sort of scripts her own nightmare, in a sense, with these imaginings and the way she reacts to them.

JENNIFER BYRNE

It's a very Gothic thing to do, isn't it? This fore… predicting and…

KATE MORTON

Absolutely. It was interesting. I noticed throughout the book there were lots of mentions of the past and the future, because… and a few moments where the narrator comments that she felt very much in the present. But they're few and far between. You know, Max is led by this event, being haunted by his ghost from the past. and the narrator is always anticipating, and writing, scripting the future for herself, and so the moments when they meet in the present are very few.

JASON STEGER

She dreams herself back, then she's in front of the narrative and then she's back where she starts. I found it sort of quite, quite… Not confusing, but I found it quite perplexing at the beginning, exactly where this woman is going with the story.

JENNIFER BYRNE

But that adds to the unease, doesn't it?

JASON STEGER

Absolutely. The unease and the atmosphere is the most convincing thing about the book, I think.

JENNIFER BYRNE

What did you think, Tom?

THOMAS KENEALLY

Well, I was amazed. Not amazed, but was cast back to another time when really accessible writers like her — Somerset Maugham, and so on — could really write, unlike many, uh… ..mass-market writers now. However, I did disagree with Sally Beauman, who is a Daphne du Maurier expert, that it is, 'Something more than women's literature.' When I use the words 'women's literature', I'm using a term that publishers love. It's one of the genres that's still selling. It's not surprising it's never been out of print. It's very well told, but I found the breathiness of passages like this — '"It's too late, my darling, too late," he said. "We've lost our little chance of happiness." "No, Maxim, no," I said. "Yes," he said, "it's all over now, the thing has happened." "What thing?" I said. "The thing I've always foreseen, the thing I've dreamt about."' Maybe I shouldn't have sent it up by overacting that, but…

JENNIFER BYRNE

Oh, I don't know, Tom. I thought you gave it a really fair go.

THOMAS KENEALLY

There is a strange breathiness to it that I didn't like, but once the ship has sunk, the ship that sinks off Manderley, you're absolutely riveted. It's great storytelling.

JENNIFER BYRNE

Defend it. Is it just women's…?

KATE MORTON

Well, I also take issue with Sally Beauman's article at the back, because she is very keen to point out that even though it's been cast as a Gothic romance, it's not. But it is. To me, it is a Gothic romance and part of the Gothic is the writer can use more overblown language, the emotions are heightened, so I'm happy with that for the genre that it fits.