Three Daphne Du Maurier Recommendations

Jamaica Inn (1936)

Rebecca (1938)

My Cousin Rachel  (1951)

 
What a remarkably good writer Daphne du Maurier was - flawless in these three classics. 
 
Jamaica Inn is a rollicking good story. It picks up on Du Maurier's grand theme - that people are complex, unknowable until the end and almost impossible to judge. Doing the right thing is never clear when you do not have all the facts. She is mistress of story-telling and writing. The book is a deserved classic. 
 
Rebecca is another Du Maurier classic - although hard to disentangle from the 1940 Hitchcock movie with Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine which was that rare phenomenon, a film worthy of the book.
 
My Cousin Rachel is the stuff of standard romance but, like Jane Austen, can be read with profit by any man for its simple story telling. It has you hooked to the end even though you are not sure why. This is not just 'women's literature' from a past era. It is a clever woman writing about real people even in what appear to be high romantic situations.

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