Jamaica Inn in Never too Late to Read Classics

May 27, 2011 Sara rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery

While reading this I was reminded of how much I loved both Daphne du Maurier and romance when I was younger. Her writing is still a guilty pleasure in which I become completely lost for the hours in which I am reading. Her plots cause my heart to beat just a tad faster and to hope that I would have the courage the heroine shows in the face of all that insurmountable danger.

Her descriptions create place marvelously and her ability to evoke an atmospheric gothic setting is one of her strongest att While reading this I was reminded of how much I loved both Daphne du Maurier and romance when I was younger. Her writing is still a guilty pleasure in which I become completely lost for the hours in which I am reading. Her plots cause my heart to beat just a tad faster and to hope that I would have the courage the heroine shows in the face of all that insurmountable danger.

Her descriptions create place marvelously and her ability to evoke an atmospheric gothic setting is one of her strongest attributes. “It was a gentle rain that fell at Helford, a rain that pattered in the many trees and lost itself in the lush grass, formed into brooks and rivulets that emptied into the board river, sand into the grateful soil which gave back flowers in payment. This was a lashing, pitiless rain that stung the windows of the coach, and it soaked into a hard and barren soil.” I can feel the rumble of the coach and the harshness of the rain and I have a sense of both Helford, that she is leaving, and the desolate moors to which she goes. There is immediate foreboding.

(view spoiler)

Listening to the voice of Daphne du Maurier is hypnotic. “Daily her mother weakened; daily the life ebbed from her. She lingered through harvest time, and through the fruit picking, and through the first falling of the leaves. But when the mists came in the morning, and the frosts settled on the ground, and the swollen river ran in flood to meet the boisterous sea, and the waves thundered and broke on the little beaches of Helford, the widow turned restlessly in her bed, plucking at the sheets. She called Mary by her dead husband’s name, and spoke of things that were gone and of people Mary had never known. For three days she lived in a little world of her own, and on the fourth day she died.” In one paragraph she has given us the last days, the time, the place and the palpable feeling of this death and with it a sense of the desolation for Mary.

Although she frequently resorts to plot devices that are cliched and problematic in Jamaica Inn, reading the story is like watching a very old black and white movie for which you do not expect the modern conventions to apply. Maybe the fact that her novels were so often those movies (Hitchcock loved her) is part of the desire I have to overlook and accept.

Jamaica Inn is not my favorite du Maurier, but it is a wonderful and mysterious ride through her Cornwall moors and deserves to be read. I do hope a new generation of readers will discover and love Daphne du Maurier as I have done. She has written novels that captivate and entertain and can bring joy even when read over and over again. ...more

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Dec 05, 2013 Christine rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks, authors-m-to-p, radio-bbc-4, library-books, romance-lovers-challenge-2014, british-literature, classics, gothic

BBC Book at Bedtime

Book at Bedtime: Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier
Abridged by Lauris Morgan-Griffiths
Read by Tamsin Greig
Producer: Alison Crawford.

(view spoiler) ...more

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May 13, 2020 Rachel rated it really liked it

Shelves: to-read-2020

4.5 - Such a great quarantine read! If you’re looking to get lost in a book, I highly suggest Jamaica Inn. It’s moody and atmospheric with a curvy, suspenseful plot and intriguing, contradictory characters. Loved it!

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