Nina Auerbach examines both the life of Daphne du Maurier as it is revealed in her writings and the sensibility of a vanished class and a time now gone that haunts the fringes of our own age.
Auerbach examines the writer of depth and recklessness now largely known only as the author of Rebecca, looking at the way her sharp-edged fiction, with its brutal and often perverse family relationships, has been softened in film adaptations of her work. She reads both du Maurier's life in her writings, and the sensibility of a vanished class and time that haunts the fringes of our own age.
"In the bright light of Auerbach's book, all sorts of unsuspected hauntings and legacies become visible."Lorna Scott Fox, London Review of Books
"Fascinating, profoundly intelligent, and stunningly well written."Signs
"Auerbach is . . . here, as everywhere, a pleasure to read, as she rescues du Maurier from her Rebecca fate, giving her her due, and indicating one of the ways in which women, disliking the assigned female role, learn to live with it and vindicate their sense of deprivation in writing."Carolyn G. Heilbrun
"An engaging blend of autobiography and critical appraisal."Robert Taylor, Boston Globe
"In an engaging prose style, Auerbach, a scholar of Victorian and feminist studies, reveals her literary passion for du Maurier. . . . She devotes a chapter to du Maurier's familyher grandfather, novelist George du Maurier, and her father, actormanager Gerald du Maurier-and how these strong men were reflected in her fiction, turning her novels and stories into a reaction against her male heritage. Auerbach also examines film versions of du Maurier's work, revealing how Hitchcock and others romanticized the dark vision of Rebecca and other fictions."Library Journal
"Outrageous and winsomely fresh."Emily Gordon, Newsday
"A fascinating portrait of du Maurier's career as family chronicler, avid researcher and frank anatomist of familial cruelty."Catherine Saint Louis, New York Times