Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, 1938
A truly amazing piece of literary history. I read this book like a drug that I was dependent on, getting agitated and anxious and finicky when it was not in my hands. Indeed one of the least put downable books I've read, blazing though the last third or so last night with no hope to withdraw from the situation.
The prose was immediately arresting but also never really leaving one in any sort of daze, quite readable. Character development is in full blast as a shy and young freshly married wife attempts to overcome the trace of their manor's late mistress. The tense and slightly neurotic passages/monologues are brilliant and unnerving in relation to sanity. Builds constantly upon a growing surplus of maddening tension and anxiety and another feeling I suppose you could call love.
Masterpiece.
5/5