This is my third book by Daphne Du Maurier, and did I love it? Yes, and No.

No, because, at times, I felt the narration was dragged. I wanted to move on to what was next, but the moment won’t pass. I was able to predict the next part in a few places. This wasn’t as thrilling as the one I read before this, My Cousin Rachel was. That’s better than this one. Although this is being recognised as one of the top best works of the author.

Why do I love it? Multiple reasons.

It starts with a dream and ends with a dream. – The opening line is epic. Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. Throughout the book, we don’t know the lead character, the new Mrs De Winter’s real name. Not once was it spoken, and till the end, I waited somewhere it would be revealed, but no. It didn’t, and that is what amazes me.

I read about Manderley, and now I want to visit Manderley, only if there is a place like that on this earth. Everything sounds so beautiful: the flowers, the house, the beach, the walks.

Read it at least once.

My favourite lines from the book.

• Nature had come into her own again and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers.
• I believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, and that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire.
• We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end.- –
• Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.
• Read English news, yes, and English sport, politics, and pomposity, but in future keep the things that hurt to myself alone. They can be my secret indulgence.
• I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say. They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word.
• ‘If only there could be an invention’, I said impulsively, ‘that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.’
• In books men knelt to women, and it would be moonlight. Not at breakfast, not like this.
• employed by her, taking her money, trotting in her wake like a shadow, drab and dumb. Of course I was inexperienced, of course I was idiotic, shy, and young. I knew all that. She did not have to tell me. I suppose her attitude was deliberate, and for some odd feminine reason she resented this marriage; her scale of values

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