Jamaica Inn in Around the World in 80 Books

Nov 25, 2015 Stil de scriitor rated it it was amazing

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Oct 09, 2022 Nadine in NY Jones rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, suspense-thriller, audio, romance, classic, romantic-suspense, era-early-mid-1800s, crime, women-on-the-edge

4.5 stars

This book is so over-the-top that I have to wonder if du Maurier wrote it as a parody of the sensation novel? Because everything is to the extreme. The landscape is extreme, the people are extreme, the action is extreme - nothing is just a little bit or a moderate amount, it's all pegged at MAX. The men are all buffoons, her Aunt Patience is a flibbertigibbet, Mary is supposed to be clever and brave but ... no, she's often an idiot too. It's not all bad, for what it is. But I was e 4.5 stars

This book is so over-the-top that I have to wonder if du Maurier wrote it as a parody of the sensation novel? Because everything is to the extreme. The landscape is extreme, the people are extreme, the action is extreme - nothing is just a little bit or a moderate amount, it's all pegged at MAX. The men are all buffoons, her Aunt Patience is a flibbertigibbet, Mary is supposed to be clever and brave but ... no, she's often an idiot too. It's not all bad, for what it is. But I was expecting a serious gothic novel, and I got something ridiculous instead. Once I recalibrated my expectations, I learned to love this book.

Sometimes the writing is wonderful, but other times it's a fail. Every time Mary's aunt appears, she is "working her mouth." Anyone who describes Mary ends up referring to monkeys (although I think they mean it as a compliment?). The rain is always a "mizzle." It's hard to believe that just two years later, the same author published Rebecca.

THAT SAID ... by the time I was about 3/4 of the way through this book, I could not put it down and I HAD to find out what happened. I canceled all my plans until I finished, with my heart in my throat. I was completely won over. If Catherine and Heathcliff had not been complete assholes, this might have been their story instead of the one they got.

I was surprised to find that Jamaica Inn is a real place!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica... The inn really was a center for smugglers, and today it contains a small "Museum of Smugglers." This book was inspired by du Maurier's stay at the inn in 1930.

I listened to the audiobook read by Tony Britton, who was not a good choice for this book, because his version of women's voices is pretty darned similar to Monty Python's women's voices. You can't help but laugh when you hear that. Why didn't they choose a woman to read this? It's from Mary's POV, after all. Britton's reading really killed this book for me. It is a testament to the power of du Maurier's story-telling that I ended up loving this. It is possible that I would have loved this book from the start if I had not listened to the audiobook with Britton's ridiculously high-pitched women's voices. ...more

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Jul 09, 2012 Oana rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: cornwall

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Feb 22, 2023 Nina ( picturetalk321 ) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: author-white, a-reviewed, publdate-1930s, genre-fiction, author-woman, europe, europe-uk, 4-star, genre-adventure, theme-cornwall

A wild ride of a read. Echoes of Wuthering Heights from the beginning, with the evocative descriptions of untamed nature and with the savage violence of sexual threat, sexual abasement, drunkenness and murder. Du Maurier sets her tale in the past as well, in the early nineteenth century, but she has the sensibility of a woman from the 1930s. So although the allusions continue to be veiled, there is no doubt that they refer to the danger of rape, and also, Du Maurier knows Agatha Christie & co, a ...more

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