Ebook Rebecca Audible Audio Edition Daphne du Maurier Anna Massey Hachette Audio Books
Download As PDF : Rebecca Audible Audio Edition Daphne du Maurier Anna Massey Hachette Audio Books
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again....
The novel begins in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady's maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives - resenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave.
First published in 1938, this classic gothic novel is such a compelling tale that it won the Anthony Award for Best Novel of the Century.
Ebook Rebecca Audible Audio Edition Daphne du Maurier Anna Massey Hachette Audio Books
"This is an edited watered down version of the book. It poses as the real thing but please don't waste your money. I bought this as an ebook companion to my hard copy and I regret the decision completely. If you want Rebecca buy the publishers version.
Not only is the book edited but there are so many typos and errors.
This is terrible, do not buy."
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Rebecca Audible Audio Edition Daphne du Maurier Anna Massey Hachette Audio Books Reviews :
Rebecca Audible Audio Edition Daphne du Maurier Anna Massey Hachette Audio Books Reviews
- This is an edited watered down version of the book. It poses as the real thing but please don't waste your money. I bought this as an ebook companion to my hard copy and I regret the decision completely. If you want Rebecca buy the publishers version.
Not only is the book edited but there are so many typos and errors.
This is terrible, do not buy. - DO NOT BUY. This should not have Daphne du Maurier's name on it as this is a hatchet job of her wonderful book. I had to return the digital copy and decided to buy the more expensive one. I originally went with this cause I didn't need the included audiobook in the more expensive one but this is only 1/4 the length of the actual book and is riddled with spelling and punctuation errors. This is not the version of the classic that you are looking for. DO NOT BUY.
- This is a great book - if you get the full book. This edition doesn't start at the beginning. Rebecca has one literature's most famous first lines "
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again". This version skips the first chapter entirely and starts around chapter 3. It is an insult to a wonderful book. Don't make a mistake and get it. You will miss the real depth of the book. - The formatting and typos in this book make it almost unreadable. It is truly awful. Spend the extra six bucks and get a decent version.
Edit after buying the $9.99 version of Rebecca, I now know this version is barely similar to the 'real' story. The famous opening line 'I dreamt again of Manderley.....’ doesn't even appear and the book seems to be a very poorly condensed edit or...something....?? I'm asking for a refund. The publisher should be ashamed! - I've saved this book on my to-read list for so long. It's one of the "secret treat" books I've stocked up like emergency supplies for desperate moments, when I need something new to me but 100% guaranteed lovely. After a lot of recent travel, stress, and child minding, I finally found a few hours of respite in a warm lamplit room, deliciously alone. Rebecca was indeed exactly what I needed.
All this aside, the book isn't for everyone. If you're not already a fan, this checklist may help you decide whether or not to add Rebecca to your own secret treat shelf
1. Do you like gothic fiction?
Although it was first published in 1938, Rebecca ages exquisitely and i's not hard for a modern reader to fall deeply in love with it. The style and turns of phrase are no barrier--it's the genre itself that will either draw you in or leave you cold. I loved Jane Eyre as a child, and this love abetted my love of Rebecca, which is famously derivative of Jane Eyre's general plot woman falls in love with a man haunted in mysterious ways by his former wife. If the idea of women wandering windswept grounds of great houses, plagued by mysterious barriers to love, sometimes in the form of the ghost (literal or figurative) of another woman sounds cozy to you, if you loved Catherine and Heathcliff or Darcy and Elizabeth, and you fancy dark psychological acrobatics, give Rebecca a shot.
2. Does a warm bath, a hot drink, and a new sweater sound good to you right now?
Rebecca is a fall read, hands down. It's rainy, it's morose, it's the dominating presence of a grand old mansion in a remote location.
3. Have you seen the movie Rebecca (1940), did you like it, do you like old movies at all?
The movie does not follow the plot exactly, but having loved the movie for a long time and now having read the book, the tone of the movie feels authentic and true to the novel. Once every few years, I go on an autumn binge and watch The Uninvited (1944), Vertigo (1958), Rebecca, and to end on a lighter note, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947).
4. Are you a feminist?
Old fashioned gender roles in Rebecca's setting will definitely irk some readers. As a feminist, I was less annoyed than interested. The mirroring of the protagonist (shy, inexperienced, subservient) and the dead Rebecca (domineering, brave, selfish, accomplished) added a great sociological layer to the experience of reading. Sally Beauman's excellent Afterword offers a wonderful explanation of the gendered forces at work in Rebecca, and also addresses several misinterpretations of the novel at the time of its publication.
If you've answered yes to any of the questions above, I absolutely recommend that you read the first 30 pages at least. Get past the description of Manderly in the dream, and begin to read about when the protagonist first meets widower Maxim de Winter, and if you're liking it by then, you'll love the rest. - I've always been an admirer of the first person narrative. When handled deftly, it magnifies the complex variables that comprise us all. Rebecca is a psychological treatise with a confessional tone spawned from the narrator's perception, and this is the story. That the narrator is young, inexperienced, and overwhelmed to the point of skittishness sets the dark tone of every paragraph in this cleverly paced mystery. Her vantage point is solidly built on assumption, suspicion and crippling self doubt. The plot is a simple one the young narrator begins as a paid, personal companion to a domineering wealthy woman, who is on holiday in Monte Carlo, when fate places her in the dining room of a luxuriant hotel next to the table of the troubled widower, Max de Winter, who hails from the Cornish Coast. An awkward and unlikely alliance develops between the narrator and the worldly Max de Winter, which leads to a hasty marriage, in which the reader learns along with the narrator of de Winters' disturbing past. Set in the house and rambling coastal grounds of de Winters' stately Manderley, the narrator enters a dynamic firmly in play, whose tone was cast and exists still from the hand of Rebecca the first Mrs. de Winter. Rebecca's shadow looms imperiously, and brings to the fore the narrator's insecurities. Having no background story on her predecessor, the inchoate narrator is tossed by the winds of assumption, half-truths and incomplete perceptions made all the more dark by the presence of Rebecca's loyal personal maid, Mrs. Danvers, whose presence lends a disquieting air, due to her supercilious knack for comparison. Rebecca is an off-kilter mystery that unfolds along the road of the search for truth regarding what, exactly, happened to Rebecca. That the narrator stays in suspense until the sinister end lures the reader through a story elegantly told in language so poetic, it is its own experience.
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