Number 21 this year is Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. Its a 'classic' novel, written in 1938. I've heard about it for years and years and thought about reading it. I know that Hitchcock made a movie from the novel, but I've never seen it either.

The novel, told in first person, is from the pov of the nameless narrator, the second Mrs. De Winter. She's a young girl, barely out of university, travelling as a paid companion to an older, British woman in Monte Carlo, when she catches the fancy of the mysterious, and much older, Maxim De Winter. De Winter, it turns out, is in Monte Carlo to get over the events of the past year, where he lost his beautiful, accomplished wife Rebecca, in a sailing accident.

When the narrator's companion catches a bad case of influenza, she and De Winter hit it off, so much so that he ends up marrying her rather than have her go off to New York with her employer. The sudden marriage takes everyone by surprise, and in fact, the most people seem to be able to say is that she is so very 'unlike Rebecca'.

The couple return to De Winter's majestic, Cornwall estate, Manderly, and it is there that the narrator is beseiged with the memory and presence of the late Mrs. De Winter. The servants constantly tell her that 'that was not how Mrs. De Winter did it'. She only hears about how beautiful and wonderful Rebecca was. And most of all, the head housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, was extremely devoted to Rebecca, and seems to go to great length to keep her memory alive, including setting the narrator up for a very great faux pas on the night of the newlywed's first fancy ball.

The narrator's despair at Manderly grows greater and greater as the gulf between she and her husband grows greater and greater. The more she hears of Rebecca, the more she is convinced that De Winter is still in love with his late wife, that Rebecca will always be between them.

And Rebecca is between the narrator and her husband, but not in the way the reader thinks.

The truth comes out one terrible night, allowing the narrator to finally put Rebecca's ghost behind her, but, De Winter's actions regarding the late Rebecca threaten to tear their world apart anyway, and De Winter can only say that Rebecca has indeed won, even after her death.

The book is gorgeously written, the Cornwall country-side written with loving detail. The characters are interesting, from the sinsiter Mrs. Danvers, to the naive narrator, to stoic De Winter, to the enigmatic Rebecca.

Its very much shaped like a mystery, or a throwback to the old, gothic romances, and in fact, had Rebecca turned up as an honest to goodness ghost, I would not have felt that out of place. But this is more a mystery than anything, as the narrator tries to piece together the life of her predecessor, only to find out, like everyone else, had Rebecca completely wrong.

It's an interesting thing, reading a book told by a character who has no first name. Its an intimate narrative point of veiw from someone we're not even on a first name basis with. I had thought this might make me think the narrator was unreliable, but I don't think that was the case, rather, she was simply mislead, just as everyone else was. Our journey to know the truth is pretty much the same as the narrator's.

There is intreque and blackmail and murder and everything that makes a good mystery. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would like to check out the Hitchcock movie now.