Juliette’s Book Club: Last night I dreamt…

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again.”
― Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca

Last night I dreamt I went to a rock concert in an old 1940’s movie theater. I paid for it with a credit card I found at an unknown location, and I took my cat with me. The cat ran off in the theater. Later after the show, which included several costume changes and fireworks I found the cat in a field next to the theater. I couldn’t find my car so we took a raised monorail home through a city that looked like it was right out of the Fritz Lang movie Metropolis. I never did figure out who the band was. Needless to say I do not steal credit cards or take my cat to concerts. However I will always love the movie Metropolis and the book Rebecca.

Daphne Du Maurier is one of my favorite authors. Her books are always mysterious, well written, and timeless.

Her villains are horrible. Her characters are vibrant. Her story lines will leave you on the edge of your seat, or glued to your book.

So today, while I write this still in a sleep haze of weird dreams and high winds trying to blow down my house, I recommend you read ANY books plays or stories by the amazing Daphne Du Maurier.

I’ve read that Du Maurier was somewhat cold, often called frosty when it came to other people. She was distant from her children. As an introvert she rarely gave interviews and disliked social gatherings. I would have thought she’d be the life of the party and had many many friends, and been a lovely mother. Go figure. Read the book and don’t worry about the author.

By the way, the move “The Birds”, you know Hitchcock “The Birds, was based on one of her stories.

My favorites are Jamaica, Rebecca, and My Cousin Rachael.

The Loving Spirit (1931)
I’ll Never Be Young Again (1932)
The Progress of Julius (1933) (later re-published as Julius)
Jamaica Inn (1936)
Rebecca (1938)
Frenchman’s Creek (1941)
Hungry Hill (1943)
The King’s General (1946)
The Parasites (1949)
My Cousin Rachel (1951)
Mary Anne (1954)
The Scapegoat (1957)
Castle Dor (1961) (with Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch)^[36]
The Glass-Blowers (1963)
The Flight of the Falcon (1965)
The House on the Strand (1969)
Rule Britannia (1972)

Rebecca (1940) (du Maurier’s stage adaptation of her novel)
The Years Between (1945) (play)
September Tide (1948) (play)

Happy Christmas (1940) (short story)
Come Wind, Come Weather (1940) (short story collection)
The Apple Tree (1952) (short story collection); entitled Kiss Me Again, Stranger (1953) in the US, with two additional stories; later republished as The Birds and Other Stories
Early Stories (1959) (short story collection, stories written between 1927–1930)^[37]
The Breaking Point (1959) (short story collection, AKA The Blue Lenses)
The Birds and Other Stories (1963) (republication of The Apple Tree)^[38]
Not After Midnight (1971)^[39] (story collection); published as Don’t Look Now in the US and later also in the UK
The Rendezvous and Other Stories (1980) (short story collection)
Classics of the Macabre (1987) (anthology of earlier stories, illustrated by Michael Foreman, AKA Echoes from the Macabre: Selected Stories)
The Doll: The Lost Short Stories (2011) (collection of early short stories)

Gerald: A Portrait (1934)
The du Mauriers (1937)
The Young George du Maurier: a selection of his letters 1860–67 (1951)
The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë (1960)
Vanishing Cornwall (includes photographs by her son Christian, 1967)
Golden Lads: Sir Francis Bacon, Anthony Bacon and their Friends (1975)
The Winding Stair: Francis Bacon, His Rise and Fall (1976)
Growing Pains – the Shaping of a Writer (a.k.a. Myself When Young – the Shaping of a Writer, 1977)
Enchanted Cornwall (1989)