From enduring bestseller Rose Tremain comes a sweeping and dramatic story of secret love and a bold imagining of how a Classic novel came to be written. With thanks to Jack @jwbakerbooks for the review and Penguin for the Review Copy.
Last night I dreamed…
As someone who hasn’t actually read Rebecca, seeing the opening line of this book mimic the classic made me realise I needed to do a little research into Daphne du Maurier. I’m glad I did. While fans of du Maurier will likely catch even more subtle layers than I did, that certainly didn’t stop it from being an engaging, enjoyable read.
Following the eponymous housekeeper, Mrs D or Danni, the imagined inspiration for Mrs Danvers, the story explores a romance between her and Daphne. We see how Danni’s trials at the stately home, retold to her lover, echo the events of the famous gothic tale. Danni is a woman who has forced herself into the isolation of service, partly to feel that she has a place in the world, and partly to escape the misery of her past.
When Daphne, a whirlwind of a woman, enters the house and draws her into an affair we see hope blossom within Danni for the first time. We are then drawn into watching, piece by piece, as we get closer to the inevitable betrayal we know is coming: the writing of Danvers.
I read the acknowledgements, not something I often do, and discovered that the book is a novelisation of a script also written by Tremain for an upcoming film. That gave the book a fantastic context for me. It reads very much like a film brought to life on the page, and re-reading certain scenes through that cinematic lens brought them to life even further.
Overall, this is a beautifully written piece of historical fiction. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a romance, it is very much a tragic, sapphic love story, but all the more compelling for it.
About the Book
‘She lifted me high, high up into another world, and then let me fall . . . Daphne du Maurier stole my life.’
Mrs Danowski – known as Danni – is the housekeeper of a grand masnion on the wild coast of Cornwall. When glamorous young writer Daphne du Maurier visits Manderville Hall to research her new novel, she and Danni are drawn into a clandestine and intoxicating affair.
For Danni, it is an all-consuming love; for Daphne a submission to long-suppressed desires. But their fragile secret is vulnerable to prying eyes and destined for heartbreak. When Daphne’s novel launches to triumphant success, Danni is distraught to find herself transformed into a malign and jealous character on the page. She seeks respite from the hurt by telling her own story: The Housekeeper.
What unforeseen encounters, what forbidden feelings can inspire a writer? With flair and panache, Rose Tremain has invented the story of how a great novel of the past came into being and in turn creates a masterwork of her own.
About The Author
Rose Tremain‘s novels and short stories have been published in thirty countries and have won many awards, including the Orange Prize (The Road Home), the Dylan Thomas Award (The Colonel’s Daughter and Other Stories), the Whitbread Novel of the Year (Music & Silence) the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and France’s Prix Femina (Sacred Country), and the South Bank Sky Arts Award (The Gustav Sonata). Her most recent novel is Absolutely and Forever (2023), which was a Sunday Times Book of the Year. The Housekeeper is currently in production as a major film, directed by Richard Eyre, with script by Tremain, and starring Anthony Hopkins and Helena Bonham Carter. Rose Tremain was made a CBE in 2007 and a Dame in 2020. She lives in Norfolk and London with the biographer, Richard Holmes.
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