Basil Davenport
So Cinderella married the prince, and then her story began. Cinderella was hardly more than a school-girl, and the overworked companion of a snobbish woman of wealth; the prince was Maximilian de Winter, whom she had heard of as the owner of Manderley in Cornwall, one of the most magnificent show places in England, who had come to the Riviera to forget the tragic death of his wife Rebecca…. There was some mystery about Rebecca's death …; but the book is skillfully contrived so that it does not depend only on knowledge of it for its thrill; it can afford to give no hint of it till two-thirds of the way through. But the revelation, when it comes, leads to one of the most prolonged, deadly, and breathless fencing-matches that one can find in fiction, a battle of wits that would by itself make the fortune of a melodrama on the stage.
For this is a melodrama, unashamed, glorying in its own quality, such as we have hardly had since that other dependant, Jane Eyre, found that her house too had a first wife. It has the weaknesses of melodrama; in particular, the heroine is at times quite unbelievably stupid, as when she takes the advice of the housekeeper whom she knows to hate her. But if the second Mrs. de Winter had consulted with any one before trusting the housekeeper, we should miss one of the best scenes in the book. There is also, as is almost inseparable from a melodrama, a forced heightening of the emotional values; the tragedy announced in the opening chapter is out of proportion to the final outcome of the long battle of wits that ends the book. But it is as absorbing a tale as the season is likely to bring.
Basil Davenport, "Sinister House," in Saturday Review (© 1938 by Saturday Review, Inc.; reprinted with permission), September 24, 1938, p. 5.
Forty-eight hours after having turned the last page of "Frenchman's Creek" you have some difficulty in remembering what it was all about. What you do remember is the impression of rich, satiny, glass-slippered triumph that Miss du Maurier made in the reading, the conquering Prince Charming atmosphere of the entire performance. Remembering that, the details of an almost preposterously innocent but very smooth, very skilful, very bright-eyed fairy tale come back. This is the story, in a vague Restoration setting, of a gallant French pirate and a beautiful lady of St. James's who loved and parted. By all the rules it should have turned out a tame if decorative trifle. Miss du Maurier, of course, makes rather more of her little effort, but exactly how she achieves her effect of truly romantic sensibleness is something of a mystery. The tale has ease, charm, a certain finish, and yet none of these things seems to matter very much by comparison of her tone of voice. It is this ring of innocent assurance in matters of pure ordinary conviction with the extra-romantic make-believe that does the trick….
What is there not merely to reconcile the reader to this faded tinselly stuff but to draw from him a faint breath of wonder? Analysis does not really help. Miss du Maurier's graces of style are not to be despised, and even her too artificially pointed dialogue, somewhat in the manner of Restoration comedy, has its elegant merit. But it is, above all else, the astonishing self-confidence with which she unfolds so girlishly daydreaming, a history that infects the reader, and in so doing carries him along as far and as fast as Miss du Maurier wills. Like "Rebecca," its predecessor, "Frenchman's Creek" is dope—though of an inferior sort. But an element of dope enters into all fiction, the best included.
"Pirates and Lovers," in The Times Literary Supplement (© Times Newspapers Ltd. (London) 1941; reproduced from The Times Literary Supplement by permission) September 13, 1941, p. 457.
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