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1,839 ratings,
3.66
average rating, 203 reviews
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published
1967
by Pocket Books
(first published 1936)
details
paperback, 247 pages
description
Jamaica Inn is a true classic. After the death of her mother, Mary Yellan travels to Jamaica Inn on the wild British moors to live with her Aunt Pat…more
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avg 3.66
editions: all | this edition
editions: all | this edition
Read in January, 1998
recommends it for:
do you like 'Wuthering Heights'?
This is another really dark piece of literature, right up my alley. If you like 'Wuthering Heights', I promise you that you'll love this book. Don't let the purple cover and pink, script letters turn you off!
Poor Mary has no idea what she's getting in to when she goes to live with her aunt and uncle! This book has murder, smugglers, deception, and a quiet romantic thread. It had me from page 1!
Poor Mary has no idea what she's getting in to when she goes to live with her aunt and uncle! This book has murder, smugglers, deception, and a quiet romantic thread. It had me from page 1!
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Read in August, 2009
OMG, this book is so so so so so boring. If I had not been reading it for a book challenge, I'd have stopped this one after the first chapter. It is so wordy, so descriptive and every time the action starts to move along, Mary, the protagonist, has to think off on some tangent and imagine this and that while the plot stalls. Too much of the brook burbling or the rain mizzling or the blackness of the moors or the people are like the rocks. After the first description, I don't need to read it anot...more
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Read in October, 2008
I don't understand my reaction to this book.
I loved Rebecca, it was beautifully and thoughtfully written, but Jamaica Inn leaves me cold and it shouldn't. I really didn't want it to. It has all of the ingredients of a dark and exciting adventure and yet...it is populated by caricatures, larger than life and impossible to beleive in. The albino priest, the drunken landlord and his colourless wife...the smugglers, the cliches of the boggy more. No no no.
Admittedly it was a less m...more
I loved Rebecca, it was beautifully and thoughtfully written, but Jamaica Inn leaves me cold and it shouldn't. I really didn't want it to. It has all of the ingredients of a dark and exciting adventure and yet...it is populated by caricatures, larger than life and impossible to beleive in. The albino priest, the drunken landlord and his colourless wife...the smugglers, the cliches of the boggy more. No no no.
Admittedly it was a less m...more
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Read in June, 2005
Jamaica Inn is a dark, grim, yet exciting Gothic; after Rebecca, it's one of du Maurier's best-known books. (I thought I hadn't read it before, but after the ease which with I guessed most of the plot, I think I probably have, years ago.) After the death of her mother, Mary Yellan goes to live with her aunt and uncle, who keep Jamaica Inn, avoided by respectable travelers and shadowed in mystery. When Mary discovers the awful doings of her uncle and his band of followers, she is torn between try...more
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Read in January, 2010
This edition has loads of typos, so my main advice is get a different one. How is that even possible with such an old book? (Unless they left in the original typos?) The cover is misleading too; the house is not on a cliff, nor is there much romance as the silly swirly letters suggest; it's mostly a mystery with a lot of violence.
It started out really slow then ramped up a lot, so if you read it, give it a minute. Without giving away too much, it ended up being pretty interesting, an...more
It started out really slow then ramped up a lot, so if you read it, give it a minute. Without giving away too much, it ended up being pretty interesting, an...more
Read in October, 2009
recommends it for:
Jade, Is, Becky
Another fantastic book from du Maurier who, from the 3 books of hers that I've read to date (this, Rebecca, and Frenchman's Creek), seems incapable of writing anything less than brilliant. Master storyteller is, in her case, an extremely well deserved plaudit.
Mary Yellan, newly orphaned, comes to live with her Aunt & Uncle at Jamaica Inn, a place so forbidding that even the locals avoid it. Finding her Uncle a mean, brutal, drunken bully and her Aunt a shadow of her former self, Mary...more
Mary Yellan, newly orphaned, comes to live with her Aunt & Uncle at Jamaica Inn, a place so forbidding that even the locals avoid it. Finding her Uncle a mean, brutal, drunken bully and her Aunt a shadow of her former self, Mary...more
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Read in March, 2010
Having fallen in love with Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier, I was anxious to read something else by her. I was not disappointed with Jamaica Inn.
It's the 1800's and Mary Yellan is a twenty three year old woman who has lived her life on a farm in Helston. She helped her mother with the family farm after her father passed away. When her mother loses her will to live, she shares with Mary her final wish. She says that Mary is to go to live with her Aunt Patience in Bodmin after she dies. P...more
It's the 1800's and Mary Yellan is a twenty three year old woman who has lived her life on a farm in Helston. She helped her mother with the family farm after her father passed away. When her mother loses her will to live, she shares with Mary her final wish. She says that Mary is to go to live with her Aunt Patience in Bodmin after she dies. P...more
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Read in November, 2007
First of all, I am a huge fan of Daphne du Maurier (Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel). She is the master of the suspenseful gothic novel. Jamaica Inn is fantastic. It is not a sweet Jane Austen read so beware! It is a compelling story with a sympathic character thrown into a bizarre situation filled with suspense and mystery. There's even a bit of romance thrown in. Definately a good read, as are all of du Mauriers!
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recommends it for:
anyone
Today's Jamaica Inn is a bit of a forlorn tourist trap so read this before you pass by. It really is a rollicking good story and it picks up on Du Maurier's grand theme - that people are complex, unknowable until the end and almost impossible to judge. Doing the right thing is never clear when you don't have all the facts. She is mistress of story-telling and writing. The book is a deserved classic.
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I only recommend this to you if you have an empty afternoon to fill and nothing else to hand. (My rating is more like one and a half stars.)
The book jacket promises, 'a dark and intriguing gothic tale that will remind readers of two other great classics, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights', and it does, a little, although it lacks their brilliance. The moors are there; there are lonely, wind-swept tors a-plenty, and the nights darken early, it's true. But these characters are much le...more
The book jacket promises, 'a dark and intriguing gothic tale that will remind readers of two other great classics, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights', and it does, a little, although it lacks their brilliance. The moors are there; there are lonely, wind-swept tors a-plenty, and the nights darken early, it's true. But these characters are much le...more
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Read in October, 2009
Jamaica Inn is a true classic. After the death of her mother, Mary Yellan travels to Jamaica Inn on the wild British moors to live with her Aunt Patience.
The coachman warns her of the strange happenings there, but Mary is committed to remain at Jamaica Inn. Suddenly, her life is in the hands of strangers:
her uncle, Joss Merlyn, whose crude ways repel her; Aunt Patience, who seems mentally unstable and perpetually frightened; and the enigmatic Francis Davey.
But most importantly,...more
The coachman warns her of the strange happenings there, but Mary is committed to remain at Jamaica Inn. Suddenly, her life is in the hands of strangers:
her uncle, Joss Merlyn, whose crude ways repel her; Aunt Patience, who seems mentally unstable and perpetually frightened; and the enigmatic Francis Davey.
But most importantly,...more
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Read in August, 2009
The Dangerous Book for Girls
Jamaica Inn is a coming-of-age story with a 19th century Gothic setting in the highlands above Cornwall. Upon the death of her mother, Mary Yellan leaves the farm to live with her aunt in the isolated old Jamaica Inn. Her baggage consists of a complete ignorance of men and the naive belief that she is suited to a life of manly labor.
The book starts slowly, with an emphasis on atmospherics. But the pace picks up steadily as Mary encounters a suc...more
Jamaica Inn is a coming-of-age story with a 19th century Gothic setting in the highlands above Cornwall. Upon the death of her mother, Mary Yellan leaves the farm to live with her aunt in the isolated old Jamaica Inn. Her baggage consists of a complete ignorance of men and the naive belief that she is suited to a life of manly labor.
The book starts slowly, with an emphasis on atmospherics. But the pace picks up steadily as Mary encounters a suc...more
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Read in June, 2009
recommends it for:
anyone
Well I enjoyed this one. I know, shock horror I enjoyed a classic! Well it was a Virago Modern Classic so a bit more recent which helped.
It is set in the late 19th century and is the story of Mary Yellan who moves to stay with her Aunt and Uncle at Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor when her mother dies. It is not a typical inn though, there are no guests and the coaches pass on by without stopping. The landlord (Mary's uncle by marriage) is a wrong'un and is involved in smuggling, and h...more
It is set in the late 19th century and is the story of Mary Yellan who moves to stay with her Aunt and Uncle at Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor when her mother dies. It is not a typical inn though, there are no guests and the coaches pass on by without stopping. The landlord (Mary's uncle by marriage) is a wrong'un and is involved in smuggling, and h...more
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Read in February, 2010
After Mary's mother dies, she moves in with her aunt and creepy uncle, the keepers of Jamaica Inn, which has fallen hard from its glory days. The inn no longer hosts travelers and its bar is open to only the most unsavory of patrons.
The blurb on the front by The New York Times called it "A fine romantic tale, rich in suspense and surprise."
They lied.
There was almost no romance to speak of, and what little there was changed the character from her spunky, stubborn, alm...more
The blurb on the front by The New York Times called it "A fine romantic tale, rich in suspense and surprise."
They lied.
There was almost no romance to speak of, and what little there was changed the character from her spunky, stubborn, alm...more
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Read in October, 2009
I love Rebecca and was looking forward to Jamaica Inn, but once I got to it I was pretty disappointed.
This book should be wonderful - the rundown inn isolated on the moors in Cornwall, smugglers, wreckers, murderers and thieves - what more could you ask for in a plot for a gothic thriller? Somehow, though, this just didn't work for me. I kept reading along, waiting to find someone to care about and for something interesting to happen and it just didn't happen. It all feels too c...more
This book should be wonderful - the rundown inn isolated on the moors in Cornwall, smugglers, wreckers, murderers and thieves - what more could you ask for in a plot for a gothic thriller? Somehow, though, this just didn't work for me. I kept reading along, waiting to find someone to care about and for something interesting to happen and it just didn't happen. It all feels too c...more
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Read in December, 2008
Another Reader's Digest condensed gothic novel. This one by the author of Rebecca. While this was an engaging story and darker/grittier than I expected, it was still pretty formulaic and shallow. I've decided that this author and others like her wrote the mass-market-paperback-bodice rippers of their day. The actual "romance" is tame, but the formula is the same: smart and independent woman finds herself in a difficult situation, meets a man she's drawn to but can't trust, someone she...more
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Read in October, 2009
Once again another amazing novel by du Maurier. Her novels are not just classics but modern days wonders - weaving powerful women of different characters through dangerous, forboding and seductive situations. I don't think anyone could ask for more in a novel! (Well except fairies and vampires, but I except that these would be a little out of place on Daphne's Cornish moors).
In Jamaica Inn Mary is a simple woman, used to her mothers lead, placed in the dangerous home of her uncle where her...more
In Jamaica Inn Mary is a simple woman, used to her mothers lead, placed in the dangerous home of her uncle where her...more
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Read in August, 2009
I haven't read any other books by Daphne du Maurier but I have watched Rebecca and Don't Look Now. I have to admit I liked Jamaica Inn more than Rebecca, although I love the movie very much.
From the first chapter Jamaica Inn grips the reader, everything is mysterious and dangerous and we find the heroine in the middle of nowhere, heading towards a place that no one wants to go anymore. I loved Mary, the central character and Daphne du Maurier really knows how to create an atmosphere...more
From the first chapter Jamaica Inn grips the reader, everything is mysterious and dangerous and we find the heroine in the middle of nowhere, heading towards a place that no one wants to go anymore. I loved Mary, the central character and Daphne du Maurier really knows how to create an atmosphere...more
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A classic early entry into the now huge field of FemJep novels--this is one of the stories that set the standard later followed so successfully by people like Mary Higgins Clark. Since all the features of this sub-genre have been run into the ground, it's hard to ignore them and get back to how reading this novel must have felt when it was new. It's far better than average, even in the cliches, because DuMaurier pulls no punches along the way, and even the more-or-less happy ending is somewhat a...more
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A typical gothic romance with the lead character, Mary Yellan, sent to live with her aunt Patience at Jamaica Inn, after her widowed mother's death. Mary is immediately overcome with loathing toward her uncle for turning her once-lively aunt into a beaten-down wretch, and when she learns of his illegal business dealings, she dreams of turning him over to the authorities. It is only Aunt Patience that keeps Mary from leaving or acting at once.
As she stays on at Jamaica Inn, Mary come...more
As she stays on at Jamaica Inn, Mary come...more
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fiction (on 57 people's shelves)
classics (on 40 people's shelves)
mystery (on 23 people's shelves)
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