maack's Updates

Strange how tightly one's body could be held, how close to somebody else's heart, and yet one wasn't anywhere near the holder. They locked you up in prisons that way, holding your body tight and thinking they had got you, and all the while your mind�� you –was as free as the wind and the sunlight.

This book made my skin crawl. That's the best way I can think to describe it. From the unsettling build-up-- the very first chapters where you just know something is not right --to the horrifying events later in this story, I was on edge the whole time.

The premise goes like this: Lucy and Everard meet in the wake of two tragedies-- the death of Lucy's father and Everard's wife --and bond through their shared heartache. The pair quickly fall in love and get married, but when Lucy arrives at The Willows, Everard's country mansion, the ghost of his previous wife, Vera, looms in every corner. As Lucy is confronted by the reality of her new life, she starts to question exactly how Vera met her end.

If that sounds weirdly similar to Rebecca, I don't think it's a coincidence. I'm fairly certain du Maurier must have taken some inspiration from von Arnim. Though the result is two books different enough to both be worth reading.

As with Manderley, The Willows is an isolated and oppressive setting, almost a sentient character in its own right. Vera is steeped in Gothic tradition-- the gloomy house, the eerie presence of Vera herself through her life-sized portrait, the weak female protagonist, mental fragility and psychological doubt, and, of course, just a pervading sense of dread.

I found Vera to be a darker, more chilling and ultimately bleaker read than Rebecca, though I am being deliberately vague to avoid spoilers. Du Maurier's work is more subtle, more balanced and nuanced, perhaps, where von Arnim's is more straightforward with no question as to who the villains are; Du Maurier seems to be sympathetic to all her characters, von Arnim arguably to none. While I typically prefer Du Maurier's style of storytelling, I can't deny that von Arnim writes a powerful and claustrophobic tale here. And one, I should add, very different to The Enchanted April.

My least favourite part of the book was how the ending seemed to come so abruptly. I was getting anxious at the dwindling number of pages, thinking surely there's no way all the questions could be answered and everything resolved in that short a space... and I was right. I feel von Arnim could have found a better place to wrap things up.

But I'm still very glad I read it. Rebecca is often tagged as romance, but no one could make that mistake with Vera. It is a brutal, feminist study of (view spoiler)."