Choosing Rebecca

After deciding to tackle the extensive list of tasks to complete for my English class, I immediately jumped to the item that I knew I would most enjoy: seeking to read a new work of fiction. Though the quest of embarking in a new ‘travel’ to a different world through a novel is something I thoroughly enjoy, pinpointing my compass to the right direction is something I find to be tricky.

I began to search through my mental list of unread novels that I have wanted to read, and also used Goodreads as a tool to look for novels similar to my favorites. When looking at novels that compared to Jane Eyre (one of my ABSOLUTE favorites) I stumbled upon the title Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. After reading a promising synopsis I decided to choose it as my next journey and went on to check it out at the library.

My thirty-minute quest led me to read for two hours, in which I can say I was captured in the story. Something that I found particularly interesting was that the novel starts out as a flashback, in which an unnamed narrator begins the novel’s plot reminiscing to the time of her youth when she met her current husband. The interesting thing about the way the story is framed as a flashback is that every now and then the narrator looks back at these experiences that she has and evaluates them from the point in which she stands now later on in her life:

“I wonder what my life would be to-day, if Mrs. Van Hopper had not been a snob.”

-       Rebecca (1965, p. 12)

These small commentaries, most importantly, foreshadow events that occur later on in the book, and build up suspense in the story.

I am very much enjoying this work of fiction, and I am sure it won’t disappoint! Has anyone read this novel? What novel have you recently began reading?