I read Daphne du Maurier's acknowledged masterpiece Rebecca last summer, and came to understand why it's regarded as such a fantastic book...I couldn't put it down, reading til the early hours of the morning then getting so scared that I'd have to stop until the daytime! What affected me most was the sense of dread and impending disaster that permeates the whole novel...you keep reading out of morbid fascination, really, to reach the inevitably chilling end as quickly as possible.
On Monday this week I began to read another of her books, Jamaica Inn - as I expected, I was immediately hooked all over again. It was written before Rebecca, and you can probably tell that it's not as mature in construction as the later book, but the Gothic terror is still there in abundance, as well as the enigmatic characters and the approaching doom.
"From far away, across many fields and scattered ploughlands, came the merry peal of bells, odd and discordant, in the morning air.
She remember suddenly that it was Christmas Day."
It will not be a happy Christmas for the inhabitants of the Jamaica Inn.
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