Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent---absorbing, elegantly written, resonant..., 9 Mar 2008
This is a beautifully written, page turning novel, based on biographical fact, that appealed to me particularly because of the two central concerns---Daphne du Maurier and the Brontes, with especial reference to Branwell. Three narrative strands--two set in 1957, at the time when du Maurier was beginning work on her biography of Branwell Bronte--and one set in the present time are skilfully woven together and thematically linked. I read this book in one afternoon, unable to put it down, and was immediately inspired to re-read Margaret Forster's Life of Daphne du Maurier, and turn again to several Bronte biographies.
Superb and scholarly! Highly recommended.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Great idea, shame about the writing, 14 Mar 2009
A novel about Daphne du Maurier and the Brontė sisters? Sounds like the perfect book to curl up with on the sofa for an intriguing evening or two. But it didn't quite hit the spot for me.
In 1957, Daphne du Maurier is a best-selling novelist living in her beloved Cornish hideaway. But as the story opens she discovers that her husband, a war hero and now treasurer to the Duke of Edinburgh, is having an affair. He's also having a nervous breakdown, which is why he's in a London nursing home. Daphne, who's had a few affairs herself, decides to make the best of things and to take her mind off it all, she embarks on research for a book she's had in mind for a while: a biography of that sad and neglected Brontė, Branwell, who died of drink and drugs, a failure in the shadow of his sisters.
Daphne's investigations bring her into epistolary contact with J. A. Symington, a scholar employed by the Brontė Society until he was booted out under suspicion of having stolen some original documents. This much is fact, and the resulting biography, The Infernal World of Branwell Brontė, was published in 1960. Most of Daphne happens in the (presumably made-up) letters Daphne exchanges with the embittered Symington, and in the private thoughts each has about the circumstances of their own lives. It's a tale of literary sleuthing (was Branwell the real author of some of Emily's poems and perhaps even of Wuthering Heights? What happened to Emily's handwritten notebook of her poems?), interwoven with ruminations on the past (Daphne's troubled relationship with her difficult, possessive father; Symington's fraught dealings with fellow-Brontė scholars).
There's also a parallel strand set in the present day: a young Cambridge graduate is doing a PhD on Daphne du Maurier and the Brontės. She, too, has a troubled past (her childhood) and an unhappy present, having recently married a much older academic divorced from a clever and beautiful wife, who haunts both him and his rather mousy new spouse.
The Daphne and Symington parts work very well, showing a mastery of pace and tension almost worthy of du Maurier herself. But the modern strand seems leaden and superfluous, the girl irritatingly wimpy and whiny and the parallels with Rebecca so clunkingly obvious that they seemed merely tacked on for effect.
But the real fly in the ointment for me was the author's persistent habit of running sentences together with commas instead of separating them with full stops or even semi-colons. This happened once or twice on almost every page. Call me a pedant, but I found it annoyingly distracting: it interrupted the flow of the narrative and in some cases I had to re-read to get the sense.
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19 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A novel about Daphne du Maurier., 24 Feb 2008
I have a major interest in all things relating to Daphne du Maurier and I love Justine Picardie's writing so I had been waiting eagerly for Justine's new novel `Daphne'. I was not disappointed, once I started reading I could not put it down. The story has an involved plot, which provides the reader with masses of detail and information, making the book a compelling read.
The story is told by three people Daphne du Maurier, Alex Symington and a young woman. Despite the three narratives, each of which interweaves with the other two, it is not an unnecessarily complicated novel. The way the story moves chapter by chapter through the different areas of the novel, helps you to hold on to everything that is happening. I think the story about the young woman is what held me the most, probably because, for me, she was the unknown quantity. She was so isolated from all the affection and comfort that most people take for granted...she was lost and alone and when she eventually found herself and we found out her name I was very moved. I like to think that she was called Jane after Wendy's daughter in Peter Pan. There were many other moments that really touched me - references to Guy du Maurier, Gerald du Maurier and the birds, the fact that inevitably Peter Llewelyn Davies was going to throw himself under that train, the young woman in the grounds of Menabilly. There was so much that had to be told and it was done brilliantly.
The elements of the novel that relate to Daphne du Maurier and Alex Symington have been well researched and are very strong factually and the fiction which is the young woman's story brings the whole narrative together beautifully. I lived and breathed every word and I hope other readers will appreciate the detail and complexity of this book as well as enjoying its content. I am sure this will be a book that provokes much interest and discussion and that it will give the author the recognition that she deserves.
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