Palimpsest

     I'm going to hear Justine Picardie talk about her novel Daphne this evening, but I thought I'd set down a few of my thoughts on the book before the event, and perhaps revisit them afterwards.
The factual part of the story is set in the late 1950s when Daphne du Maurier was writing a biography of Branwell Bronte, and coping with a crisis in her marriage. The complementary modern-day half of the novel sees a young woman, nameless almost throughout, marrying an older man whose charismatic first wife dominates the marriage from beyond it, and researching Daphne and her Bronte preoccupation. The parallels here with Rebecca are clear but carefully balanced and not laboured, and this forms a neat counterpoint to Daphne's own dark story, and dark it is.
     It's a book about obsession, deception, literary detective work, layers of truth and more, and feelings of desperation and paranoia run through it with the chilling intensity of a Hitchcock film. Several characters are on the edge of a precipice in their lives, not least Daphne herself, who tries to escape her melancholy by retreating further into her private world - her work, her secluded home Menabilly (the Manderley of Rebecca), and her wider family history.
     It reads as though written with real passion for its subject matter - though Justine clearly wears her learning lightly - and as such I was quickly drawn in and found it quite fascinating. It has made me want to revisit Margaret Forster's biography, Daphne Du Maurier, and discover more about the du Mauriers's connection with J.M. Barrie whose position and influence with the family was great and whose presence in the book is pervasive. But as a novel on its own it works beautifully, and while its characters are complex and often occluded, its many connected strands are compelling and intriguing and show that "....sometimes the universe chimes, very quietly".



    A line from J.M. Barrie, quoted in the book, might make for a suitable summing up: "The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it".

Comments

[Elaine]

After reading this book I, too, sought out the Margaret Forster biog of Daphne which I posted about earlier this year. It is excellent, beautifully written as are all Forster's books, well researched and I could not put it down. Highly recommended

[Elaine]

After reading this book I, too, sought out the Margaret Forster biog of Daphne which I posted about earlier this year. It is excellent, beautifully written as are all Forster's books, well researched and I could not put it down. Highly recommended