Review: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Review by Elle

Publication information: Virago Press / 30 Jan 2003 / 448 pages

Where I heard about it: This was one of my set book for my Open University course this year but it’s been on my radar for a while.

Spoilers: None. ZIP. Nada. To spoil even a little would be to ruin the suspense!

Review:

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

Working as a lady’s companion, the heroine of Rebecca learns her place. Life begins to look very bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise. She accepts, but whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to the ominous and brooding Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory of his dead wife Rebecca is forever kept alive by the forbidding Mrs Danvers.

Not since Jane Eyre has a heroine faced such difficulty with the Other Woman.

I can confidently say that I have never once converted so many people to wanting to read a novel using nothing more than my Goodreads status updates. Furthermore, I can absolutely say that I haven’t read a single novel this year which has so completely lived up to its potential in the way that Rebecca has and, let me tell you, this year has been the year of good books so that’s really saying something.

“I do love you,” I said. “I love you dreadfully and I’ve been crying all night because I thought I should never see you again.”

When I said this, I remember he laughed and stretched his hand across the breakfast table. “Bless you for that,” he said; “one day, when you reach that exhalted age of thirty-six which you told me was your ambition, I’ll remind you of this moment. And you won’t believe me. It’s a pity you have to grow up.”

Rebecca had been on my wish list for what seemed like forever; it was one of those novels that I just never quite got around to. My interest was piqued earlier this year, however, by some intense research into JM Barrie (the author of Peter Pan for anyone not quite up on their British literary traditions) and his involvement in the du Maurier family (indeed, Daphne du Maurier called JM Barrie “Uncle Jim”). In all of the literature that I’d waded through in my quest to illuminate something real and tangible about Barrie, I kept tripping over the wan and distant figure of Daphne du Maurier, finding hint after hint of her troubled life and the way in which she achieved catharsis through her novels (something which somewhat disturbingly mirrors Barrie’s idea of catharsis). I am not, it has to be said, someone who is vastly invested in authorial intentions when I read novels – what the author intended doesn’t matter all that much after the novel and its ideas become the property of its readers – but I must confess to having a small obsession with dearest Daphne, so when Rebecca turned up on my set books list for my 20^th century literature class, I just about jumped up and down on the spot.

It would be impossible for Daphne du Maurier not to doff her cap to Charlotte Brontë in the telling of Rebecca; the intertextual links to Jane Eyre and the original tale of The Other Woman linger softly around the edges of the novel from the first page and converge like a smog on the tale as we claw ourselves nearer to the end. Readers are immediately catapulted into the quasi-confident first-person narrative – which is almost unwaveringly delivered by our disturbingly permanently-nameless narrator – and astute lovers of the nineteenth-century novels that are du Maurier’s inheritance will here find the tenacity of Jane Eyre herself becoming muddled with the naïveté of Catherine Morland, the bumbling, socially inept protagonist of Austen’s Northanger Abbey . While we’re on the subject of genre-inheritance, I think it would be equally impossible not to regard Max de Winter in his full context as allusions to Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre shadow his every word (and what steamy and dark words they are, I was in love from the first page and willing to believe anything he told me, even if that included that martians inhabited Manderley and made the tea). Du Maurier draws on the aloofness of Darcy, the wit and cheek of Rochester and the brooding violence of Heathcliff to create the menacing, gloomy figure of the Bryonic hero that our narrator so completely falls for.

What du Maurier does achieve is a glorious reinvention of the Gothic. Readers of classics like Frankenstein and Treasure Island will revel in the pervading air of menace that exists in Manderley, shadowy halls delivering bumps and squeaks, surprise servant corridors where you least expect them, rooms untouched since the last Mrs de Winter sat in them, rain coats carrying perfumed scents. Indeed, the word “Manderley” itself seems to have so firmly fixed itself in our cultural consciousness that we are able to recall it mythic surrounds as quickly as we are Pemberley and Thornfield. Lovers of the more recent works of Kate Morton which take place around mysterious locations (The House at Riverton, The Forgotten Garden) will enjoy discovering the secrets of Manderley and will probably be able to make more Beauty and the Beast allusions when it comes to an entire wing being shut up and dark.

This was a woman’s room, graceful, fragile, the room of someone who had chosen every particle of furniture with great care so that each chair, each vase, each small, infintesimal thing should bee in harmony with one another, and with her own personality. It was as though she who had arranged this room had said: “This I will have, and this, and this,” taking piece by piece from the treasures of Manderley each object that pleased her best, ignoring the second-rate, the mediocre, laying her hand with sure certain instinct only upon the best.

To say that Daphne du Maurier draws on other sources of inspiration for her novel is not, of course, to say that it is not original in its own way. Each character follows their own personal path in their search for identity and the role of women and gender expectations are just as fully explored, demolished and built up again. There is a cast of truly unforgettable supporting characters, which is an achivement in itself and something I love to see in any novel but particularly nineteenth-century and twentieth-century novels because it seems that contemporary novels have a hard time of making them seem like anything other than bit-pieces to show how good the protagonist is (also, Frank stole my heart). Rebecca is also a manifesto, a view of the ever-changing fragility and of the superficial and blatantly surface relationships particularly typical of the 1920s and, curiously, of the 2000s.

In short, Rebecca is a jewel in the crown of twentieth-century literature: it manages to deliver that which what readers crave most and that which they don’t expect, all at the same time. It is recommended for anyone who is sick of formulaic romantic fiction and wants to sit on the edge of their seat clutching their throat for the entire ride.

My top ten list just keeps getting better.

10 decadent chocolate bon-bons: The best-of-the-best.

(For more rating information see here.)

The Passage Readalong: Week 4 – Chapters 19 – 22

The Passage Readalong

Week 4 – Chapters 19 – 22

And once again, it’s time for The Passage readalong! This week is Viv’s week to host, and you can find that main post here If you’re trying to catch up or wondering what exactly we’re up to, please see our guide to reading along with us, found here.

Elle’s a bit swamped with uni right now (and Kate will soon be taking that position, but more about that coming soon!), so we’ll be sticking with Kate’s thoughts this week. Elle has promised a massive thought-dump when she’s a little less bogged down, so worry not; you’ll be getting her counter-point soon enough!

Kate’s thoughts…

And abruptly, The Passage is a whole different book.

I’m not overstating the experience. Starting Part IV felt like starting an entirely different book. At first, I was frustrated, annoyed, and just – disengaged with the entire thing. It took me probably an hour, all-told, to read the first 10 or so pages; I started it several times and always opted to do other things (including homework!) rather than climb in. I’ve come to distrust Justin Cronin – said in present tense because I still don’t trust him, not after I’ve been jerked here and there into caring about characters that are only stolen from me a half-dozen pages later – and couldn’t get back into the book when it had such a hugely different tone. I had no Wolgast to pull me in, and from the looks of it, no Amy. I simply could not bring myself to care.

Until I started getting into it.

It’s hard to explain how the experience and mood of the settlement struck me. It’s a bit like if Lois Lowry’s The Giver grew up and proceeded to have a love child with George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones. There’s this gritty, post-apocalyptic bleakness that is somehow combined with this larger-than-life fantastical element that I really actually came to enjoy by the end of this week’s reading. And for all of my grousing that he jerks around my emotions, Cronin is an excellent character writer. Within the first chapter I adored Alicia, Peter, and Theo, thought Michael was interesting and found Elton delightfully curious while still being strange. I connected in a way I hadn’t since Wolgast took Amy to the carnival, because I believed in these characters. I wanted them to be real people, I had aspirations for them (and theories on romantic attraction – hey, who doesn’t read a book and think about that?!) and I cared about what they were going through. The scene in the station, with Peter and Alicia on the roof and then the attack, put my heart in my throat. The library made my stomach churn and actually horrified me. The mall scene was haunting, mysterious, and brilliantly done. All told, I have to say that I –

I almost don’t have any complaints about Part IV this far.

It’s cautious optimism, though, which bring me to my overall criticism of the book as a whole. My first point, which I’ve said before and I’ll say again, is that I feel jerked around. I want to be invested in these characters and fully involved but it’s so hard when Cronin basically set up the first 250 pages of the book to ensure that every time I got attached to a character, he or she died a gruesome death! I understand, of course, that not every character can ride off into the sunset on an armored white horse, but I just feel that Cronin works too hard to keep his readers off-balance and shock them for the sake of shock. Plus, once again, there are no minor characters; everyone is so fleshed out that I kind of want to beat my head into a wall. I don’t need to know that dying Gabe (who is mentioned about once) has a mentally disabled son, that some random character has four children (complete with their names), or that Arlo and Hollis are identical except for the beard (but Sara can see the difference even if they both have beards). It’s simply too much information. And in a lot of ways, it was why Part IV was hard to get into; it was so laden with description and character information right off the bat that I didn’t have a chance to hit the “flow” of the chapters until something like 15 or 20 pages in.

My second criticism is that I’m sort of wondering what the first part of the book was for. Every composition teacher I’ve ever had, be it for fiction writing or creative non-fiction, has given me the exact same piece of advice: start in the middle. There has to be backstory, has to be exposition, and has to be something that happened before the meat of the plot. Here, it really feels like the first three parts was exposition that, instead of leaving somewhere on his computer labeled “first draft,” Cronin decided to incorporate into the actual novel. As much as I am in love with Wolgast, I have to wonder if the whole wouldn’t have been more coherent and more interesting to read if it’d started with Peter on the Watch than with Amy’s mother trying to cope. I hope that the beginning ends up synching up with the rest of the book more than it has thus far, but more than that? I hope this doesn’t sow the seeds that in Part VII, we’ll be moving on to some other era of human existence, a few thousand miles and a hundred years away from this one, and forced to learn a whole new set of characters in a whole new setting with a whole new primary conflict.

I want to believe that maybe the book has gotten marginally better, but I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

So what do you think? Part IV: Better or worse than Parts I through III? We’d love to hear in the comments! If you posted on your blog about the Readalong, please leave us a link so we can pop it on the end of this post!

The Passage Readalong: Week 3 – Chapters 12 – 18

The Passage Readalong

Week 3 – Chapters 12 – 18

Welcome to our third installment of The Passage readalong! As we’ve finished Part III, we’re back with new thoughts on the latest chapters! If you’re looking to catch up or wondering what this is all about, please see our guide to the readalong, which you can find here.

Please note: a lot happened in this section of the book, and there was absolutely no way to avoid some pretty major spoilers. If you’re not caught up, or you’re thinking about reading the book, please proceed with caution. There was literally no way to describe this section of the book or comment thoughtfully on it without some spoilers. Nature of the beast, I’m afraid!

Synopsis – Chapters 12 – 18

Chapter Twelve begins with a sickly, exhausted Sikes arriving at Wolgast’s cell within the compound with a purpose: Amy is in the compound as well, and they suspect she’s dying. Wolgast finds Amy in isolation, in a coma, and is told that he can only see her if he wears a special suit that will prevent him from contracting the virus. He goes in unprotected, itself. Meanwhile, Grey has started to lose hours, unable to recount them, and spends most of his time feeling ill and off-center. He begins to notice changes in the people he works with, both in their physiques and their demeanors. Another change has come in the form of Anthony Carter, who is now not really Anthony at all, and who manages to kill one of the men who cares for him, drinking his blood. Richards, who in his own right is as haunted as Grey and the others, suspects Anthony is the meanest of the lot. Richards also gets the disturbing news that a young black woman has arrived looking for Wolgast.

The black woman is in fact Sister Lacey, whose trip to the compound is recounted in Chapter Thirteen. Following the voice of God in her head, she walked, hitchhiked, and stowed-away to Colorado, eventually making it into the facility by hiding in the back of an Army-issue supply truck. Richards, who isn’t sure how to deal with her, goes to release Doyle from his cell, only to find that Doyle somehow knew she was coming. Before Doyle and Lacey are reunited, however, Grey – guided once again by the voice of Zero in the back of his mind – walks into Zero’s chamber and allows Zero to kill him and also, to escape.

The security breach picks up steam in Chapter Fourteen, when Richards discovers that all of the subjects have escaped and the soldiers throughout the facility are panicking rather than following protocol. One destroys the elevator and then power is lost, trapping Wolgast and a barely-conscious Amy in her isolation room. Dr. Lear comes in to rescue them, helping them to maneuver past the dead and dying and into an air vent, but ultimately stays behind to ensure Amy’s safety. Wolgast manages to get Amy through the ducts, up a ladder, and into the main area of the facility. He’s reunited both with Doyle and Lacey, where Doyle provides him keys to a get-away car. Despite the fact they exit together, both Doyle and Lacey stay in order to distract the subjects.

Chapter Fifteen begins Part III and chronicles Wolgast and Amy’s escape from Colorado to Oregon. They make their way to a camp Wolgast spent summers at as a boy, and as they settle in, Wolgast remembers meeting and falling in love with his ex-wife, Lila. He thinks of her often as they settle in at the camp, as well as detailing the changes in Amy: she no longer can tolerate the feel of the sun on her skin or in her eyes, she sleeps during the day but stays up at night, and she seems to know things she otherwise shouldn’t. But they can’t stay at the camp without supplies, forcing Wolgast to go down to a small store. There, he discovers that the virus and its carriers has spread from the incident at the compound to cover a large portion of the Midwest, putting the country into panic. The man at the store wars Wolgast that the virus is even worse than mentioned in the newspaper.

Wolgast and Amy continue to stay at the camp throughout Chapter Sixteen, as well, though the situation continually becomes more dire. Forest fires ravage the area and nearly destroy the camp; Chicago falls to those with the virus and California secedes from the union; the man who runs the general store is found dead. As they settle in for the winter in Chapter Seventeen, though, it appears that they may be safe from the woes of the rest of the world. A man arrives from nearby Washington after having been attacked by someone with the virus, confirming Wolgast’s fears that they weren’t as safe as they thought. Though he shoots the man to protect them, the damage has been done; soon, a nearby city is “cleansed” by a nuclear blast (as rumors’d said was happening to other infected areas) and blows out the window in the front of the lodge where Amy and Wolgast are staying. Though Amy is unharmed, Wolgast’s leg is pierced by a large piece of glass. Despite his very best efforts, Wolgast is unable to mend the wound properly and it gets infected. Amy takes care of him as best she can, but when he wakes up one night with the realization that he’s dying, he discovers that the trees are full of those with the virus – and Amy is gone.

Chapter Eighteen is entirely an excerpt from the diaries of a woman named Ida Jaxon, called “Auntie,” recounting her experiences during the evacuation of Philidelphia during some point we can only assume was contemporaneous to Wolgast’s last stand. In it, Ida recalls the restrictive lives of her family as the city was placed under martial law during the run-up to the “jumps” arriving, as well as her father’s decision to place her on a FEMA train that was leaving the city for safer places. She is eventually delivered to the newly-seceded California, where she is reunited with her cousin Terrence and proceeds to settle into a FEMA facility. She mentions things we’ve not heard of before, such as First Families, Watchers, the Chous, and the Time Before, but doesn’t elaborate. The end of the chapter marks the end of Part III.

Kate’s thoughts…

I can officially say, with meaning, that this book has turned into a disappointment.

I mentioned this to Elle on the phone this morning, and I think it bears repeating: Cronin’s habit of killing people off arbitrarily and without any real warning is now a full-out gimmick. I cannot even describe to you in words how frustrating it is that he builds up literally dozens of characters with all these meaningful details only to tear them down pages or chapters later with absolutely no remorse. Deaths in literature should mean something. They should make your heart climb into your throat, should make you want to weep, should stand on your belly and choke you, but in The Passage, they just feel – empty. Throughout the compound being destroyed and dozens of established characters all dying, I had absolutely no emotional connection to the experience. I didn’t care if they got out alive or not, because I knew some would and some wouldn’t and that the decision of who fit in which category was completely arbitrary. Because there’s absolutely no way to tell which characters matter, you either are forced to become emotionally connected to all of them – or none. And sadly, I think or none is much more likely.

I think that’s my biggest beef with this book, all things considered: there’s no emotional connection.  I don’t really care about any of the characters, or what happens to them; there’s no impetuous for me to keep reading. I tend to forget the book even exists until Sunday or Monday, where I read my five chapters, put it down, and then forget about it again. There’s not enough there to compel me to keep going, to light a fire where I am desperate to follow Amy to the next step of her adventure, and honestly? Killing Wolgast has stripped me of the only character I actually liked, which is just going to make it harder for me to feel anything about this book. Instead of connecting with it like a novel, I connect with it like I do my casebook for class, reading what I have to and then being finished when I turn the last page of the assignment.

The camping chapters in this section, though, were probably my favorite, I think in part because of Wolgast and part simply because it was a break from the disjointed, sharply segmented point-of-view jumping which’d taken place up until then. For the first time, it felt like a discreet narrative, and it made me really want to just take that part of the story and turn it into a novella. Man rescues little girl, protects her from the crazy world outside his control, man dies. Instead, those chapters were over too quickly, and we were back to another disjointed segment, one I’m not even sure belonged there. And I am back to not caring, because now the only emotional tie I had to the book is gone.

It’s funny, because the American edition starts with no fewer than four pages of quotes that just sing absolute praises of The Passage. I think nearly every newspaper on the planet is quoted somewhere at the beginning – and I can’t figure out why. I can’t figure out what in this book is so amazing that the world’s newspapers are writing odes to it. I’m a third of the way into it. You’d think I’d have some idea by now.

Instead, I’m just continually let down and disappointed, and frankly, very tired of it. I’m glad it’s a fast read, but mostly, I just want it to be done. And that is just sad.

Elle’s thoughts…

Elle is feeling a bit under the weather right now, but I’m authorized to tell you her thoughts will be coming very soon!

So what do you think? Did you enjoy the first few chapters? We’d love to hear in the comments! If you posted on your blog about the Readalong, please leave us a link so we can pop it on the end of this post!

The Passage Readalong: Week 2 – Chapters 6 – 11

The Passage Readalong

Week 2 – Chapters 6 – 11

Welcome to our second dealing of The Passage thoughts. We’re late getting our thoughts up on this one (in fact, we only have Kate’s!) but don’t worry, next week we’ll be right back on the ball.

For the main post this week, please go here. For all posts so far, please go here.

Kate’s thoughts…

This past week was a very busy one for me, such that I worried I wouldn’t be able to get to The Passage at all. Of course, part of this is that I judge how much I’m enjoying a book on my urgency about it (if I’m loving it, I will find the half-hour to read; if I’m feeling torn, I will spend that half-hour playing SimCity or watching television), and so, as Sunday night arrived and I’d read very little, I took it as confirmation of the flaws I talked about last week. The disjointed nature of the book, and the way it jumped around, was starting to grate on me; the dozens of unanswered questions and microscopic red herrings were forcing me away from The Passage and onto other activities.

Then, Sunday night, I sat down to read.

And within less than 24 hours, I’d finished the 80-odd pages to bring me through Chapter 11 – and then read a good portion of Chapter 12, too, because I couldn’t stop.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still of two minds about The Passage. I feel like the book is a bit schizophrenic in its approach in that every paragraph on every page is stuffed with meaning. Every character, even the minor ones, burst with personality, which was charming at first but now is just frustrating; I don’t need to know every detail about the girl Doyle is flirting with or the woman at the zoo with the baby, thank you. I think I know why Cronin is doing it, attempting to make the reader care about every individual in the book on his or her merits so, when something happens, it’s all the more shocking!, but it over-fills the pages. The book would feel like a much tighter read if some of that detailing were removed. Instead, it feels like Charles Dickens and Dan Brown had a supernatural love child and named him Justin Cronin.

In the same way, the plot is starting to irk on me. The atmosphere is still perfect – the facility is incredibly creepy, the “subjects” have honestly made my stomach twist and my heart pound a few different times, and seeing the slow changes through some of the characters feels like watching a really well-executed movie – but there are just too many holes. Everything goes unexplained while hundreds of little hints are dropped here, there, and everywhere, and it feels incredibly disjointed to me. I feel like I’m supposed to feel a bit like Wolgast – just someone doing his job, dragged into this insane situation without any idea what it actually is, and slowly coming to the realization that something very wrong is happening – but Cronin fails to execute that point of view properly. It feels like a flawed The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in that I, the reader, am meant to be just as confused and clueless as the characters in the book, but there isn’t enough there for me to feel fully included, either. The best comparison I can draw is walking into a room where a friend is watching a movie and trying to figure out what is going on. Actually, it’s more like walking into a room where a friend is watching the second movie in a trilogy and trying to figure out what was going on.

That said, there are elements I absolutely love. Amy is interesting and the more we see of her, the more I want to know. The scene with her at the zoo made my belly twist (but was then promptly forgotten; I wish the threads were better followed through); her relationship with Wolgast is absolutely perfect. I love the theme of lying/hiding the truth that is running throughout and the ease with which people deceive each other. Wolgast is possibly my favorite character and the scene with he and Amy at the fun fair really pulled at my heartstrings. The scenes Subject Zero and his moments with Grey made me grateful I was reading in the well-lit library. I want to know what the actual virus is and what really is happening in the facility. I definitely want to know more.

I just wish the knowing would happen more quickly. Instead, I’m starting to get the feeling that The Passage is about 200 pages longer than it needs to be – a bit, again, like Dickens.

Book Babble: In My Mailbox the Review Diaries Edition!

In My Mailbox (IMM) is a weekly feature organised by The Story Siren. IMM is a post where you can show which books entered your house and it also gives you a chance to say thank you to the people that kindly sent them. To find out more about how you can join in click here.

Books I mentioned in this IMM:
A Long, Long Sleep by Anna Sheenan | Goodreads | Rosy’s review @ The Review Diaries | Thea’s review @ The Book Smugglers
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill | Goodreads
My Last Duchess by Daisy Goodwin | Goodreads
One Day by David Nicholls |Goodreads
Chain Reaction by Simone Elkeles | Goodreads | Kate’s review of Perfect Chemistry | Elle’s review of Perfect Chemistry
You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me by Sarra Manning | Goodreads
Brooklyn, Burning by Steve Brezenoff | Goodreads
Want To Go Private? Sarah Darer Littman | Goodreads
Such A Pretty Girl by Laura Wiess | Goodreads
How It Ends by Laura Wiess | Goodreads

Coming this week…

Elle reviews Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.

Kate tells us her Top 5 Books Which Shouldn’t Be Taught In Highschool!

 

The Passage Readalong: Week 1 – Chapters 1 – 5

The Passage Readalong

Week 1 – Chapters 1 – 5

Welcome to the The Passage Readalong! Thanks for stopping by and joining in with us, we’re hoping for lots of interesting discussions in the coming weeks. If you’re looking for the schedule for each week or for a catch-up of past posts and discussions, you can bookmark our The Passage Readalong page and find everything linked up.

Before we kick off this week, we’d like to announce the winners of the two copies of the novel which were advertised for our giveaway over at Vivienne’s blog! Our international winner is Carlyle and our UK winner is Jules. Congratulations, gals, your copies will be winging their way to you soon!

One last quick note: there will be spoilers for The Passage in the following synopsis. I’ve tried to keep them light, particularly on chapter five, but as we progress along they will be a necessary evil. Beware those who have not kept up!

And now on with the show…

Synopsis – Chapters 1 – 5

As The Passage begins, we are introduced to Jeanette, a woman who works in a small diner in Iowa. Jeanette finds herself pregnant by a married man whom she never identifies to her father and goes through with the pregnancy, giving birth to her beloved child Amy. Unfortunately, Bill Reynolds refuses to stay out of Jeanette’s life and inexplicably reappears, forcing himself upon her and Amy and moving into Jeanette’s house. Bill is violent to Jeanette in front of toddler Amy and she eventually throws him out but she finds herself unable to make rent and has no choice but to sleep in her car with Amy until she’s made enough money sleeping with men to keep a regular hotel room. Jeanette finds herself on the wrong end of a hire one night and shoots the young man, fleeing with Amy to a nunnery before leaving her there and vanishing without a trace.

We are then introduced to Jonas Lear, PHD, a molecular scientist who sends a series of letters to his friend and fellow professor, Paul. The emails detail a mission which is being undertaken deep into the jungle in conjunction with the army – something which not everyone is pleased about – but unfortunately the party is attacked by swarms of bats and is left scattered, injured and dead. The professor calls for an evacuation, although some of the scientists are slowly healing despite the disease killing others.

The following chapter introduces us to Brad Wolgast, a divorcee FBI agent who is part of Project NOAH. This military project, we discover, is a means to finding human test subjects for an antiviral drug which can cure any disease and prolong human life indefinitely. Wolgast is uncomfortable and uneasy about his assignment as we watch him recruit Death Row inmate Anthony Carter. In the end, Wolgast is given an assignment to travel to pick up the abandoned Amy in the nunnery.

Finally, we are introduced to Grey, an attendant who minds Patient Zero, a man who perhaps floats, hangs or levitates (no one is sure which) and glows in the glow from heatlights. Grey works for Project Noah as a condition of his release as one of the many attendees of the various ‘Subjects’ kept within the compound. And let’s not forget the mysterious Richards, who knows bad jobs when he sees them and wants to know what anyone would want with a little girl named Amy…

Elle’s thoughts…

I was terrified when I first started The Passage. Not, you must understand, because I was worried about its subject matter but because of the first chapter. I had, as Kate below notes, extreme problems with the first chapter. I dislike the decayed, dismal atmosphere of the tiny dust town with no way out. I disagree that you have to be a mid-westerner to understand the feeling that such a setting carries – Cronin’s first chapter creates the kind of setting that I would expect to find in some Australian fiction, John Steinbeck’s bleaker works and some particularly bleak and endless films like Halle Berry’s 2001 Monster’s Ball.

If I’m honest, I had problems with Jeanette’s inevitability, with her seeming unwillingness to fight and the way she invited a man she didn’t want into her home and did nothing about it. I have problems with the concept that she was on a spiral that she couldn’t stop and that no matter what happened, she was going to be the victim of men. I see the potential for this theme to continue with Amy and I’m interested – and a little worried, still – for where Justin Cronin takes the rest of his female characters.

The following chapters, however, sold the book to me. Unlike Kate, I loved the choppy nature of the first few chapters, which just seemed to work for me until the threads came together, and I have to be completely honest in that I’ll keep reading to see what happens to Brad Wolgast who I love. There were some stunning lines in Brad’s chapter such as:

Wolgast looked down at himself to discover he’d slept the night in his clothes. This was becoming something of a habit; ever since he’d gotten the email from Lila, he’d spent most nights on the sofa of his apartment, watching television until he fell asleep, as if going to bed like a normal person was something he was no longer qualified to do.

Brad kills me and I feel like there’s more to his decision to accept the job for Project NOAH than meets the eye.

I loved the epistolary style of the emails – I love emails in fiction the same way I love letters and telegrams in nineteenth-century fiction – and I loved feeling the way that the tension mounted in the emails from Jonas. I thought the blank one was particularly clever. They reminded me of the importance of letters rather like some scenes from Wilkie Collins and sensationalist fiction. The atmosphere also reminded me of some of the early scenes of Heart of Darkness.

So, I’m hooked. Gimme more.

Kate’s thoughts…

There is good and there’s bad about The Passage, and I’m not going to pretend that, if the book ended right now, I would give it a perfect 10.

On the one hand, and arguably the best hand, the book is incredibly atmospheric. It gripped me from the first and dragged me down into its dark depths. And “dark” is the right word, because from the first page, there is something haunting about Cronin’s tone. As early as the first few pages, I kept expecting something scary to happen because of the bleak desolation I felt while I read. I gazed upon the run-down, empty Iowa town with not much more there than a restaurant and a gas station; I sweated through the oppressive heat and humidity of the South American jungle. Every detail feels calculated to make you keep your lights on and look behind you, even if you know nothing’s there. I especially (unlike Elle) liked the first chapter’s bleak helplessness and the inevitable feeling of Jeanette’s fate. Granted, I think you have to be a Midwesterner to fully appreciate it, or spend some time in another depressed, rural area that most people leave only when they die (and sometimes, not even then), but it really gripped me. I could’ve read a whole story about Jeanette and her downtrodden Midwestern life and never complained, but I am a bit of a sucker for Americana in that respect. The atmosphere has yet to let me down.

Similarly, I really like the characters. I thought Jeanette was sympathetic and I really like the complexities of Sister Lacey – and the nuns with whom she works. Amy interests me in a cautious way, like when you’re reading a mystery and know someone coming out of the bathroom is a clue but don’t yet know whether it’s a red herring or something you should care about. And I was most impressed by chapter three, watching as Wolgast and Doyle went from empty shells to actual characters (especially Wolgast) and wondering how Cronin’d managed to evolve them so seamlessly. I wouldn’t mind watching a television show that’s The Adventures of Wolgast and Doyle, I liked them so much! There’s clearly a complexity in every single character, this wonderful creation of very real people, with very real personalities and quirks. I like that.

But I do have one great big glaring gripe that is set apart from the rest of my praise, and that is this: the beginning of the book is so disjointed. I read the first chapter after dinner one night and then couldn’t start the second for a few days, and I was shocked at how dramatically different the two were. Not just in structure (I quite like the e-mails in the second chapter), but in content. The story of Jeanette and Amy was replaced by researchers in the wilds of South America, and I just – couldn’t see the connection. And they were followed up by Wolgast and Doyle, who again didn’t seem to fit into the scheme of the previous chapters. Each chapter was great, in isolation –pitch-perfect, really well-organized, atmospheric and addicting and worth reading more of – but that was exactly the problem: they felt like isolated chapters. Parts of a different whole and I couldn’t really thread them together. There was a reference to South America in the third chapter that tied in into the second, but it really wasn’t until well into the fourth chapter that I stopped feeling like The Passage was three books in one, and I didn’t like that feeling. I don’t want a disjointed jumble of characters and plots, I want a coherent thread running through everything. I didn’t feel like I had that, and it was incredibly jarring.

I obviously can’t rate a book at this point, so I’ll just say “so far, so good.” I’m enjoying it but it’s not my favorite, it’s picking up but I am not yet glued to my seat like all the quotes all over the U.S. edition promises I will be, and I think I will probably quite like it – once it gets moving the rest of the way. Until then, I will remain cautiously optimistic that it keeps improving the way the first few chapters did, and that it really will become a coherent whole.

So what do you think? Did you enjoy the first few chapters? We’d love to hear in the comments! If you posted on your blog about the Readalong, please leave us a link so we can pop it on the end of this post!

Zoë Marriott Week: Day 4 – Swan Kingdom Review, Fairytale Facts and GIVEAWAY!

Welcome to Day 4 of Zoë Marriott Week!

Hi guys! Thanks for sticking with us all the way through to Day 4, we’re really stoked to have you all here. Today we had originally planned to do a review of both of Zoë’s remaining titles but we decided in the end that both Kate’s review and her list of awesome fairytale facts deserved a whole post all to themselves! So that’s what you’ll find below. Look out for the Daughter of the Flames giveaway tomorrow on Zoë’s Q&A post.

Speaking of, if you would like to ask a question for our Q&A post (anything at all! We have it on good authority that a certain lady authoress loves to speak of puppies and obscure literature) then please click here!

The Swan Kingdom by Zoë Marriott

Review by Kate

Publication Information: Candlewick Press / 13 October 2009 (reprint edition) / 272 pages

Where I heard about it: As we planned this week, Elle said (and I quote), “You’ll read Swan Kingdom. It’s a you-book.” And so it went.

Spoilers: Very few, and none that will ruin the book for you.

Review:

When her mother, the queen, is attacked by an unnatural beast, Alexandra tries every one of her healing skills, but her greatest effort is not enough. Too soon Alexandra’s father, the king, is spellbound by a beautiful stranger – a woman intent on having the Kingdom to herself. In a terrifying moment, all Alexandra knows disappears, including her beloved brothers, and she is suddenly banished to a barren land unlike her own. But Alexandra has more gifts than even she realizes, and she’ll need to master all of them as she is confronted with magic, murder, and the strongest of evil forces.

I am a great lover of fairy tales. I studied them in college, used them in my curriculum when I taught, and recently, shocked a colleague at my internship when I confessed my all-time favorite movie is Beauty & the Beast. I love the magic and mythos inherent in fairy tales, which is probably why I tore through The Swan Kingdom in less than a full day, devouring it in three long sittings.

From the very first page, there is no mistaking The Swan Kingdom as a fairy tale. The world itself is both literally and figuratively filled with magic – the enaid, a mystical force, fills Alexandra’s homeland of The Kingdom, and the narrative is beautiful and absolutely captures that feeling of wonder. You never forget that you’re reading a fairy tale, not as Alexandra discovers the Circle of Ancestors, as her mother fights through her last illness, and as the beautiful stranger, Zella, is brought into her Kingdom and people begin to behave strangely. Even when she is sent away to the enaid-deprived Midland to stay in her aunt’s house on the seashore, there is always that pulsing drive of magic behind both Alexandra’s experience and the reader’s. It reminded me at times of watching a Disney movie; at some points, all it needed was a soundtrack and some talking animals!

She pressed a kiss to both my cheeks, and I heard the quiet huff of her breath, slightly quicker than usual; then, with a last touch to my shoulder, Mama left me and walked forward to lay a hand on the lintel stone.

The rock whispering grew louder. More voices joined the first ones, their strange words mingling into a soft babble of sound. Around us, the forest seemed to fall still.

“You must pass through the gateway.” Mama gestured to the waiting shadows within the opening.

“I…” My stomach fluttered. “Alone?”

I could stretch the blog to the ends of the internet discussing the huge, sweeping sections of this book I absolutely adored. The whole of the internal mythos – with the enaid and other magic, the Ancestors and the world itself, the conflict between Alexandra and her father’s new bride – is addicting and makes me wish the book was a few hundred pages longer. Alexandra’s brothers are delightful (I may have a crush on Robin; I always love the smart characters!), and Gabriel, who first debuts on a beach in the middle of the night, may very well be the mysterious Mr. Darcy of the Swan Kingdom world (though, gratefully, without all the interfering pride!). The last 60-odd pages are can’t-put-it-down good and compelled me to stay up past my bedtime to finish.

But despite these praises I am proudly warbling, there were a few times when I just wished there was more. The fairy tale style is limiting and not always rewarding for a reader; Alexandra often tells rather than shows, which means the reader never hits the emotional pay-dirt of certain moments (especially, sadly, some of those with Gabriel). There were dozens of little scenes or places within scenes that I wanted more of. I wanted to watch the evolution of Alexandra’s emotional growth – pain, helplessness, anger, falling in love – but the nature the fairy tale style held that at bay. I couldn’t help but feel disappointed at times, wondering, Is that really it?! when I realized I wouldn’t fully experience Alexandra on the beach with Gabriel, the truth depths of the black emotional spiral she decends into, or the full thrust of her misery with her aunt. And then, again, I sulked when I realized the end was full of red herrings and dead-ends full of magic and wonder – but lacking the flesh I really love on my twists and turns.

In return, I told him guiltily edited stores of my own home. How could I say that my mother had been Lady Branwen the Wise? Ladies were not supposed to sit on the sand in their nightclothes and talk with strangers. Nor did I wish to speak of the horrors that had overtaken me so recently; I didn’t even want to think about them.

How long we sat on the shore I do not know, but when I glanced up I saw the milky wash of light in the east that drowned out the stars and knew it was near dawn.

As a great lover of fairy tales, I adored Swan Kingdom. But there is a part of me, a good-sized chunk, that wished it wasn’t a fairy tale so I could have the full meat of this story – and devour it for a lot longer than one mad-cap day.

7 double-stuff oreos: A book that comes with high recommendations.

(For more rating information see here.)

Fun Fairytale Facts

1. The Brothers Grimm (what, you didn’t know they were real?) are most often given credit for being the first to collect fairy and folktales, but this is not entirely true. Charles Perrault, a French author, transcribed many traditional stories over 100 years before the Grimm brothers, originating stories such as “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Cinderella.” Despite this, his collection pales in comparison to the 200-plus stories amassed by the Grimm Brothers, many of which – such as “Sleeping Beauty,” “Rumpelstiltskin,” “Rapunzel,” “Snow White,” and “Hansel and Gretel” – are still well-known today.
2. But don’t mistake the Brothers Grimm for Walt Disney. The Brothers transcribed the stories as originally told. Many are dark, violent, and gruesome by modern-day standards. At the end of “Cinderella,” for instance, Cinderella’s step-mother cuts her daughters’ feet to pieces in order to force the glass slipper to fit; in “Rumpelstiltskin,” the little man rips himself in half. Some of the stories were so dark that people complained they weren’t suitable for children (the title of their book was Children’s and Household Tales), causing them to remove and heavily edit many of the stories for future publication.
3. The reason why we say things like “death comes in threes” and consider three a lucky number is in part due to fairy tales. Oftentimes, what happens in a fairy tale happens three times: Cinderella attends the ball three nights in a row, Rumpelstiltskin gives the queen three days to discover his name, and several stories themselves have three of something as an essential element (three little pigs, three bears, and so on).
4. European cultures are not the only to have fairy tales. Almost every major culture has its own version of the classic fairy tales we think of today. The Zuni Tribe of the southwestern United States, for instance, has a story called “The Turkey Herd” in which a wild girl who cares for turkeys is sent to a dance by the birds and dances with the head of the tribe; in the Philippines, “Juan and Clotilde” tells the tale of a young man who wins the hand of a girl trapped in a tall tower with no doors or stairs. A former professor at the University of Pittsburgh has categorized hundreds of stories by type, all of which can be found here. (Link here! )
5. Fairy tales, like many folk stories, are born of an oral tradition. While it is impossible to pinpoint the first written fairy tale with complete accuracy, an ancient Egyptian story circa 1300 B.C. is considered to be the oldest. In terms of what we think of as Western fairy tales, Aesop’s tales in 6 B.C. are probably the oldest. But literature is rife with fairy tales, too, and elements of them – as well as entire stories! – appear in the works of Shakespeare, Chaucer, Spenser, and others.

Giveaway

For a chance to win a copy of The Swan Kingdom, along with a signed bookplate, a Shadows on the Moon postcard and fridge-sized magnet, leave a comment below!

Giveaway is INTERNATIONAL.

Please remember to leave a valid email address. Winner will be contacted and will have 48 hours to respond.

Book Babble: IMM the Review Edition!

In My Mailbox (IMM) is a weekly feature organised by The Story Siren. IMM is a post where you can show which books entered your house and it also gives you a chance to say thank you to the people that kindly sent them. To find out more about how you can join in click here.

Books I mentioned in this IMM:
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs | Goodreads | Wonderful book trailer! | UK Book Tours
Pictures of Lily by Paige Toon | Goodreads | Lucy in the Sky review
Chasing Daisy by Paige Toon | Goodreads | Lucy in the Sky review
Sworn Sword by James Aitcheson | Goodreads
Cavalier Queen by Fiona Mountain | Goodreads
The Girl is Murder by Katheryn Miller Haines | Goodreads
Heavenly by Jennifer Laurens | Goodreads
Eragon by Christopher Paolini | Goodreads
Eldest by Christopher Paolini | Goodreads
Brisingr by Christopher Paolini | Goodreads
Sister Mischief by Laura Goode | Goodreads

People I mentioned in this IMM:
UK Book Tours
BookAngel_Emma @ Twitter
Carly @ Twitter
Splendidbird @ Twitter

Book Babble: In My Mailbox, the one with A Dance with Dragons

In My Mailbox (IMM) is a weekly feature organised by The Story Siren. IMM is a post where you can show which books entered your house and it also gives you a chance to say thank you to the people that kindly sent them. To find out more about how you can join in click here.

Books I showed in this IMM:
A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin | Goodreads
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver | Goodsreads
The Day Before Lisa Schroeder | Goodreads
Rules of Civility: A Novel by Amor Towles | Goodreads
Cracked Up To Be by Courtney Summers | Goodreads
Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers | Goodreads
You Against Me by Jenny Downham | Goodreads
Ship Breaker by Paulo Bacigalupi | Goodreads
This Gorgeous Game by Donna Freitas | Goodreads | Angie @ Angieville’s review
Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour by Morgan Matson | Goodreads | Morgan’s stop @ The Book Smugglers on the book tour
Jessie <3 NYC | Goodreads
Texas Gothic by Rosemary Clement Moore | Goodreads
The Swan Kingdom by Zoë Marriott | Goodreads
Daughter of the Flames by Zoë Marriott | Goodreads
Shadows on the Moon by Zoë Marriott | Goodreads

Books I didn’t show in this IMM:
Lucy in the Sky by Paige Toon | Goodreads | Didn’t show because it’s used and the book is ruined.
Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet | Goodreads | Kindle
Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini | Goodreads | Kindle

Bloggers I mentioned in this IMM:
Ana @ The Book Smugglers
Angie @ Angieville
Daphne @ Loving Books

Don’t forget – you can still enter our 7 book giveaway! One day left!

Click here to enter.

Guest Blogger Week: Day 5 – Daphne from Loving Books

Welcome to Day 5 of Guest Blogger Week!

Today we welcome Daphne from Loving Books, who (in our not so humble opinion) has the cutest hair and most awesome accent in the world… oh, and she also likes books.

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The lovely girls from The Book Memoirs have invited me to come over and talk about my three favorite books – so here I am! I have so many favorites that it was like picking your favorite child, but these three books have a special little place in my heart.

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

Where I heard about this book? To be honest, I have no idea where I first saw it! It suddenly was all over the blogosphere so I had to pick it up. I was expecting to like it – but I wasn’t expecting to love it as much as I do. Lauren Oliver’s writing style is beautiful and she really knows how to write from the perspective of a teenage girl. The message within the book is wonderful – you never know how you change someone’s life when you do the slightest thing different. When you say you appreciate someone when they don’t expect it. Because the book is about Samantha Kingston, who dies at the beginning of the book and gets to live her last day over 6 more times, changing a little bit in her life every time. Yes, I cried during this book, and I still do when I reread it. It has a special place in my heart.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I was very late in picking this book up. I had seen it in stores in The Netherlands, but read the back of the book and was somewhat disgusted by the story. When I started blogging, I saw so much love going around that I eventually ordered the boxed set of the trilogy. And how horrifying the story may sound, I love this book to bits. The Hunger Games is about a dystopian world in which northern America doesn’t exist anymore – instead, there’s Panem and a yearly event named the Hunger Games, in which children between 12 and 18 are forced to kill each other until there’s only one teen standing. What I love about the story most of all is the world building. The ability that Collins has in making me queasy just by reading – I really felt the anxiety that Katniss must have felt in the Arena. But of course, I would be silly not to mention Peeta, who is one of my favorite characters of all time.

Sing me to Sleep by Angela Morrison

After watching a video in which this book was mentioned, I decided to pick it up. I hadn’t heard anything about the book itself – I just loved the cover and the synopsis sounded good. And I ended up bawling my eyes out. It was that emotional for me. This book tells you about a girl who is called ‘The Beast’ because she is, in her own words, so ugly. She then gets a makeover (a really extreme one though) and on a trip abroad, she meets a guy and feels like she found love for the first time. The book was an emotional ride for me and in the last 60 pages or so I couldn’t get my eyes to stop leaking. This is not a happy read whatsoever, but it really touched me and because of that, it’s one of my absolute favorites. It deserves a lot more love than it’s getting at the moment, and even though the makeover is way too much, I really hope that people will start picking this book up more.

PS: If you know me, you’re probably surprised that I haven’t included one of the Harry Potter books in this post. I decided that I couldn’t mention one book and just leave the rest of the books aside – because I truly love them all. My favorite however, would be Deathly Hallows.

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Giveaway

To win a copy of one of one of Daphne’s favourite books, simply leave a comment below!

* The giveaway is, as always, international but please make sure either The Book Depository or Amazon ships to your country before entering.

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Be sure to pop back tomorrow when Michelle from Fluttering Butterflies will be flip-flapping through!