{"id":7552,"date":"2017-10-09T11:56:30","date_gmt":"2017-10-09T11:56:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=7552"},"modified":"2017-10-16T11:18:27","modified_gmt":"2017-10-16T11:18:27","slug":"manderley-forever-the-life-of-daphne-du-maurier-by-tatiana-de-rosnay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=7552","title":{"rendered":"Manderley Forever: The Life of Daphne du Maurier by Tatiana de Rosnay"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/strong>\"\"<\/a>Published by Allen & Unwin 5 October 2017<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hardback, 352pp, \u00a318.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Jessica Mann<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWhy wasn\u2019t I born a boy?\u201d \u00a0the young Daphne du Maurier demanded. Born in 1907, she was not at all unusual in recognizing that females had far less fun, freedom and opportunity than their brothers. Until the days of women\u2019s liberation in the second half of the twentieth century, a\u00a0 great many girls wished\u00a0 they were boys, \u00a0though rather fewer believed, as Daphne did until her late teens, that she \u00a0was in fact a boy imprisoned \u00a0in a girl\u2019s body. In the end she resigned herself to life as a member of the inferior sex. But she always felt \u2018a permanent emptiness that continued to gnaw at her.\u2019<\/p>\n

The biographical facts are well known: after an unusual childhood as the daughter of a world famous \"\"<\/a>actor, Daphne was a troubled adolescent and a discontented young adult. Then she escaped to Fowey in Cornwall, published her first novel at the age of twenty-four, married Boy Browning, an army officer, and had two daughters and a son. And all the time she was writing. There were several best sellers before Rebecca<\/em>, the book that made her famous. Its power derives partly from the raw emotion about the house in which it is set. The description of Manderley reflects Daphne\u2019s feelings for the love of her life: Menabilly, a derelict manor house, leased to the Brownings by the Rashleigh family.<\/p>\n

\u2018It makes me a little ashamed to admit it but I do believe I love Menabilly more than people,\u201d Daphne declared, and moving out after twenty five years broke her heart. \u00a0She stayed in Cornwall, and, with her son, published a polemic about the destruction of local traditions. \u00a0Yet \u00a0Daphne had \u00a0ignored tradition all her life, \u00a0\u00a0remaining in Cornwall rather than accompanying her husband on his various postings, conducting \u00a0lesbian love affairs \u00a0(with, among others,\u00a0 Gertrude Lawrence) and \u00a0wearing trousers and even trouser suits long before they were regarded as acceptable. \u2018It\u2019s people like me who have careers who really have bitched up the old relationship between men and women. Women ought to be soft and gentle and dependent. Disembodied spirits like myself are all wrong.\u2019<\/p>\n

At least eight books about Daphne du Maurier have been published since she died in 1989, the best of them being Margaret Forster\u2019s authorized biography. Tatiana de Rosnay tells the familiar story \u00a0\u00a0in the present tense, making psychological inferences, imagining her subject\u2019s thoughts and feelings in a way that could seem intrusive but is actually very persuasive. \u00a0I did not expect to learn anything new from de Rosnay\u2019s version, and nor did I, but much enjoyed reading it. Rebecca<\/em> is De Rosnay\u2019s favorite novel, du Maurier her favourite writer, \u2018an unusual and enchanting novelist, scorned by critics because she sold millions of books.\u2019 Writing Manderley Forever<\/em> was a labour of love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Jessica Mann<\/p>\n

Daphne had ignored tradition all her life, remaining in Cornwall rather than accompanying her husband on his various postings, conducting lesbian love affairs (with, among others, Gertrude Lawrence) and wearing trousers and even trouser suits long before they were regarded as acceptable. \u2018It\u2019s people like me who have careers who really have bitched up the old relationship between men and women. Women ought to be soft and gentle and dependent. Disembodied spirits like myself are all wrong’ […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7552"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7559,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7552\/revisions\/7559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}