Rereading Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca

As a child and a teenager, I spent summers with my late beloved godmother. She loved old movies in addition to being a bibliophile. I first saw Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca with her the summer I turned fourteen. I loved the movie, and she said I had to read the book, which was very different from the movie and better.

How right she was. Hitchcock had cinematic style, but De Maurier's prose not only created a story with depth and resonance but also showcased a skill in dramatic story telling. I read the book again in college and again in my early twenties. I just finished reading the novel again in my late thirties, and it still remains brilliant.

Life and maturity have changed the book's impact each time I have read it; I have learned not only more about fiction's craft and art but about myself. The 1997 version featured an actress who more embodied my vision of the the novel's unnamed narrator who I identified with in terms of her shyness and insecurity. A skillful writer, Du Maurier brilliantly chose to create a narrator that would allow Rebecca's ghost to overpower her own personality.