Rebecca

 

"Tall and dark she was...She gave you the feeling of a snake. I seen her there with my own eyes. By night she'd come. I seen her" (157).

My first experience with Rebecca was actually through the film of the same name, which I watched one night while scrolling through movie options and landing on one that I believed I could use to wind down for sleep. Little did I know, the storyline was not at all what I expected, and I also would not be sleeping soundly that night.

I was not aware of this book until after college, when I was so struck by the film adaptation, and then proceeded to go down a black hole of internet research. From the very first chapter, I knew that Rebecca was an extraordinary publication. There are many classics that I have read for a respect of their cultural or historical importance, but Rebecca is a novel that I can recommend without caveat or hesitation.

1. "'Rebecca,' that tall sloping R dwarfing its fellows" (88).

Raw characterization. Daphne du Maurier chose not to name the main character; in contrast, the book itself carries the name of her dead rival. That in itself provides a window into the work that du Maurier was trying to do. She presents her characters so vividly, investigating the psyche of the protagonist while she crafts a personality for the Rebecca that she has never met. It is through hints from conversations, the behavior of her husband, leftover trappings of a once lively household, and the machinations of her own imagination that she develops an idea of who Rebecca may have been.

Through it all, Rebecca becomes a haunting specter who drifts through the halls and demands attention, even as her husband tries to erase any memory of her. Slowly, the truth of her hold on the house and its inhabitants is revealed. The way that the author unfolds each layer of characterization is masterful. The protagonist struggles with self-abasement and misinterprets the actions of those around her. She descends into a pseudo-madness through obsessing over this mercurial dead woman whose influence looms larger than any living character. All of the people living at Manderley House are thrown together in a battle against the unseen ghost crafted delicately within their own minds. Who are they really fighting? Certainly not the memory of Rebecca. Rather, their own insecurities, traumas, and most fatal flaws are revealed.

2. ...in a moment the dark trees had thinned, the nameless shrubs had disappeared, and on either side of us was a wall of colour, blood-red, reaching far above our heads. We were amongst the rhododendrons. There was something bewildering, even shocking, about the suddenness of their discovery" (66).

Striking descriptive language. Rebecca is written with such painstaking detail, and the descriptions don't merely float at the top of chapters before the reader dives into the more serious plotwork. The figurative language plays an important role in developing the characterization of the setting, which is featured prominently as the metaphorical existence of the dead Rebecca within the text. Manderley is more than just a beautiful and mysterious mansion on the seaside--it reflects the inner emotional state, longings, desires, and motivations of its inhabitants. The house harkens the past, foreshadows the future, and eventually represents the aftermath of the story's events.

I recently read a book that attempted to personify the house in which the story took place. In a book review, someone had commented that the final effect felt very much like a high school creative writing prompt. Rebecca exemplifies how one can utilize this tactic to perfection. The result is eerie, achingly beautiful, and terrifyingly bizarre.

3. "The sky above our heads was an inky black. But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea (386).

The quality of a living nightmare. Rebecca is categorized as a romantic psychological thriller, a very interesting intersection between two genres, neither of which entirely fit the novels true character. There is a nightmarish and shocking quality to the writing and the plot, and the elements of psychopathy, murder, and arson all contribute to the categorization of the book. It is the psychological torture of the main characters, particularly by their perception of the deceased Rebecca, that truly identifies the text with this department of literature. 

And then we must address the romance between the unnamed protagonist and the widowed Maxim de Winter. The book begins by describing a future time when they are together, away from the destructive qualities of Manderley's unerasable memories, happy in whatever way is possible after the trauma of their experiences. The rest of the story is told in flashback, and as the reader sees the intrepid couple suffer through brutal misunderstandings that threaten to drown them, there are still glimpses of their true love for one another. Eventually, we know, they must conquer this strife and persevere, but so much of the story revolves around their parallel and intersecting conflicts that it is hard to view the novel as a true romance.

Rebecca is one of the best classics that I have read in some time, and although I found myself marking and highlighting page and after page of memorable language, I wanted to read without interruption. There are times when you read a book and know that it will come back into your life at some near point in the future, and that is how I feel about Rebecca. I am only disappointed in one thing: that I did not encounter it sooner.

Oliver Twist

 

"Let the tears which fell, and the broken words which were exchanged in the long close embrace between the orphans, be sacred."

There is nothing quite so comforting and wholesome as reading a Charles Dickens novel, and all the better if it is raining and a flickering candle casts its glow on the water-streaked windowpanes. For the first time, I chose to listen to an audiobook of a Dicken's novel, and may I just say that Oliver Twist turned out to be an excellent choice. The book has long been adapted into a stage play, and thus its theatrical value is well acknowledged. Hearing it read out loud has convinced me that, like Shakespeare, Dickens is meant to be experienced in this way! The nuanced accents that differentiate each person and the characteristically British sense of ordered revelation in each chapter come alive in the voice of a talented orator. I can't recommend it highly enough.

For some time, Great Expectations has remained one of my favorite Dickens works. However, I believe that my opinion is shifting after this latest interaction with orphan Oliver and his many shady or compassionate acquaintances. What I love about all of Charles Dickens' writing is his extremely memorable characters; he shows their flaws and their humanity, as well as the societal pressures that force them into character-shaping circumstances. Yes, the story is about Oliver Twist: an orphaned boy in his pre-teen years, seeking to escape the poverty and mistreatment of his youth, but consistently falling innocently into the clutches of evil influences who would abuse his naivety.

But the story is so much more than just one boy's journey to finally finding family and a rest from his sojourning in the sinister corners of London's less affluent boroughs. Dickens tells a tale of the inherent meanness of so many people whose positions in life allow them the freedom to raise up their fellow man, but yet choose arrogant mistreatment and manipulation of the disadvantaged instead. The characters who fight against these forces of selfishness and hatred may seem to falter for a time, but they succeed in the end by choosing to do what they can. Rescuing just one small boy from the street may seem insignificant, but showing kindness is reciprocal, and no villain will be left unpunished in the end.

What I love specifically about Oliver Twist is the desperation that Dickens first creates and then sequentially resolves. The reader follows Oliver's abandonment and imprisonment in a seemingly irreparable life of crime, but his goodness and innocence persist, and he eventually lands in the home of a widow and her adopted daughter who will do everything in their power to protect and preserve these qualities in him and also in the world.

The last reason I'll give for loving Dickens in general, but Oliver Twist specifically, is the inclusion of ironic humor. There is a satisfying poetic justice in how the villains find their demise, but there is also a morbid cheerfulness throughout even the darkest of situations. Throughout it all, the reader maintains hope, because there is still sarcasm in the world--a true talent of the author.

The Invisible Man

 

“Alone-- it is wonderful how little a man can do alone! To rob a little, to hurt a little, and there is the end.”

I never used to listen to audiobooks, as I found them (at their best) to be cringeworthy, with all the little accents and inflections that the speakers chose to introduce. At their worst, I found them prosaic, stealing away my own creative interpretation of the writing and imposing ideas upon me about the sound and pace of the story. Perhaps, at the root, my distaste for them came from a niggling doubt about the validity of the format. Are audiobooks cheating? My erudite sense of superiority certainly seemed to think so...

In the last few years, my opinions on this subject have softened. For one, every child's first introduction to reading is listening to books being read aloud. Sometimes, when we read, our eyes skip over certain parts of the prose, and we miss elements of the speech patterns and nuances in the dialogue. An added bonus to listening to a book is an assurance that you know how to pronounce words, rather than just use them correctly in a sentence: a challenge that every avid reader can appreciate.

I've found quite a few audiobooks that have changed my overall thoughts about them, and The Invisible Man is one of them. The dramatic reading of a thriller, especially one filled with uniquely specific British accents, can really elevate one's experience with the text. The Invisible Man is such an outlandish story with an entirely unforgettable cast of characters. The people that populate the story are somewhat hapless, blown about by the effects of the protagonist's unpredictable and sometimes violent behavior. This mode of storytelling invites a certain amount of inevitable chaos that is one of the novel's strong points. A thriller is inherently lacking in perfectly reasonable motivations, and thus the reader is not always certain about what lies around each corner, even while knowing that it cannot be good.

The novel is quite short, which I think aids in the immediateness of its plot. We are in the streets, seeing the people of the town dissolve into anarchy as they attempt to locate and escape the wrath of an unseen threat. There is both humor and horror in this scenario. The doors and windows are locked, but is the unperceivable villain hiding in the darkness, waiting to pounce?

The character of the invisible man, both the protagonist and the antagonist, is like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein--blinded by ambition, arrogantly convinced of the importance of his own scientific contributions, and ultimately meeting his demise through these devices. There is a cautionary tale within the book's pages, a sense of reluctant sympathy for the man despite the responsibility he bears for every consequence. He describes the fear, exhaustion, and exposure to the elements that his invisibility has caused him, but yet, he never truly repents of the pride that led him down such a path.

If you are looking for a quick, extremely British, and lightly chaotic thriller, this book will certainly suffice. It is not my favorite, as the character development of nearly every person other than the invisible man is essentially nonexistent. The book holds its readers at arm's length by presenting the story as a deliverance of evidence or report on the events. This technique is enjoyable and uncommon, but is also not my preference in storytelling methods, as the end result is a cold and distant narrator without much emotional depth.