My Cousin Rachel

du Maurier is very quickly becoming one of my favourite authors. Her writing is engaging and reads smoothly, her stories are always gripping and entertaining, and her characters are so enigmatic and almost sinisterly charming.

When Philip Ashley was orphaned as a child, his rich bachelor cousin Ambrose, 18 years older than him, took him under his wing. When Philip turns 21, Ambrose decides he needs a change in weather and goes off on a long continental trip, during which he meets and marries a lady who is distantly related to them - or their cousin Rachel. Slightly more than a year later, Ambrose dies from a brain illness in Florence, Italy, where he had been staying with Rachel. Philip is enraged and resolved to confront Rachel, but is unexpectedly drawn by her kindness and gentility. But is Rachel more complicit in Ambrose's death than she had at first appeared?

Rebecca, which I enjoyed thoroughly (perhaps even slightly more than this one), had a very slow start and it took a while before the reader is plunged into the thick of things. My Cousin Rachel has no such qualms. The action is gripping from the very first page. Rebecca also had a more obviously sinister, creepy vibe to it than this one, whereas the same creepiness in My Cousin Rachel requires some digging and thought, but it's still there.

The beautiful and engaging writing already won me over, but the characterisation of this book is its main attraction. Philip Ashley is quite possibly one of the dumbest main characters I've read in a long time, but yet you can read the childishness, the self-entitlement, and the petulance from Rachel's POV. You can understand why she had no wish to tie herself up to him for life. Rachel, on the other hand, is a beautiful enigma, a play of light and shadows. Is what you're seeing what you're getting? You don't know, and you probably never will know.

Some spoilerish thoughts on Rachel and the ending:
The easy interpretation of this book is to label her a villain, manipulative, cold, and calculating - but I personally think she's so much more than that. I enjoyed how she resisted interpretation and pinning down in all senses of the word. Both Philip and Ambrose were almost driven mad by how they couldn't get her no matter how much they tried. She took their money, it's true, but I don't think either of them would've minded if that had allowed them to pin her down at last. But she refuses to be so. She refuses to even be pinned down by us readers, in that we, like Philip and Ambrose, can never fully understand her intentions or her mind. I feel like that's why the ending of the book is so vague and confusing on first read, especially if, like me, you read it as a mystery novel (and even a bit like Rebecca) where we'll be presented with a nice denouement and all the answers we need with a neat little bow by the end. This isn't the case, and it's deliberately discomfiting. Rachel would sooner die before she is forced to be captured, to be pinned down and account for her actions.

i think i prefer rebecca to this, but it was a good and enticing read nonetheless.

similar to henry james' the turn of the screw, du maurier employs an unreliable narrator tinged with paranoia and ambiguity that leaves the reader unsure of trusting much. like rebecca, the circumstances of a character's death will have you tapping your chin in suspicion, but that is not the only motivation to read this book in one setting.

my only gripes are the narrator and that it was predictably too much like rebecca, although this fact is advertised openly (at least on the copy i own). i found philip ashley absolutely annoying and naïve, despite having been brought up to be otherwise. he reminds me of edith wharton's newland archer from the age of innocence, so to summarise this book was read hoping the narrator would fall from grace in the end. then from the start, i knew who was going to die, and who would be suspected of the murder, which is not what i want out of a mystery novel. but unlike rebecca and more similar to turn of the screw, the ambiguity is stronger in this novel, which might be more appealing to some. personally, i wanted the answer to this whodunnit, and because i didn't get it on top of having to put up with an annoying narrator, i demoted this one to four stars.

perhaps read my cousin rachel before rebecca.