Sunday, November 23, 2014

Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier

    This is the third time I have read Daphne Du Maurier's Jamaica Inn. The first time was in the middle of high school and I'm sure it contributed greatly to my love of Steve McQueen and eventually Bruce Willis. Oh, yes there were a string of real life 'bad boys' between the two. I still prefer McConaughey over Gosling. Sigh . . .

    I read her 'Rebecca' first on recommendation from my mother, so I knew Du Maurier would not be cut and dried either in characters or story. I was pretty much a gothic romance and romantic suspense reader at the time, leaning toward Holt, Whitney, Eden and Stewart as my favorite authors. The lack of the neat little happy ending in these two books threw me a little, then spoiled me forever. Du Maurier sent me into mysteries and detective stories by Christie and Chandler as well as the political thrillers of the cold war. My reading went from child to adult.

    The orphaned Mary Yellan being sent off to the moors to live with an Aunt she hardly knew fit my gothic mind. Her aunt was not as she remembered, her uncle frightening, the sense of something menacing and wrong all worked. But then things actually became evil as her uncle becomes drunk and tells her of the business he is really in. The Vicar is beyond creepy. And the young man, her uncles brother Jem, is an admitted horse thief. What? And Mary is present when he sells a stolen horse back to its rightful owner. So Mary fell for him head over heels.This was different. I liked it. 

    Du Maurier is probably not the best writer I have ever read, but she was an expert at bringing you the unexpected and Jamaica Inn was instrumental in making me a life long reader.