When Mary Yellan, a farmer's daughter from Helford, obeyed her mother's dying wish and went to live with her aunt near Bodmin, she had no idea that her attractive, laughing relative was married to the landlord of Jamaica Inn, miles from anywhere on Bodmin Moor. As the coachman warned her: 'Respectable folk don't go to Jamaica any more'. And as her evil giant of an uncle soon told her, after a few glasses of brandy: 'I'm not drunk enough to tell you why I live in this God-forgotten spot, and why I'm the landlord of Jamaica Inn.' In her first famous novel Daphne du Maurier transferred the world of the Bronte's to Cornwall in the early nineteenth century. In the dark events along the Cornish coast, in the ugly brutality of Joss Merlyn, and in the enigmatic character of his brother Jem, the reader gets an exciting foretaste of her next novel, Rebecca.
One of the most beautifully written books I've ever disliked. And let's be clear - my 3 stars is my attempt at objectivity, because it is a beautifully written book, and I did dislike it. A lot.
From the first sentence there's no doubt this story is dripping with dark, forbidding, gothic atmosphere. By the second page, it's swimming it in. By chapter 2, it's drowning. I don't know if du Maurier was trying to pad out a short story, or if she just really wanted to make sure her readers knew this was going to be a dark, dreary, forbidding story; either way, too much of a good thing is still too much. There might have been some skimming.
I liked Mary well enough, but I was unable to muster any sympathy for poor Aunt Patience; I really just kept hoping someone would push her down the stairs. I do not much like enablers any more than I like those they enable. Still, I was really getting into the plot (once I deep dived through all that atmosphere), until I got to the part where Mary meets the vicar.
What is up with the albino trope? I realise that when this was written the whole thing might have taken readers by surprise, but has there ever been an albino in a book that wasn't the evil villain?
(hide spoiler)
At that point, I was truly just reading to get 'er done. There was no way the book was going to surprise me from that moment on.
Aaannnddd then there's the ending. I liked Mary until that point. Hell, I liked Jem until that point. Now, I think they both deserve a horrible ever after. She should just change her name to Patience and be done with it.
Reading updates
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Started reading
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30 September, 2017:
Finished reading
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30 September, 2017:
Reviewed