Rebecca

⚖The case for it

A young bride with no name marries into a house where the first wife still rules the flowers, the menus, the servants, and for many chapters the girl only wanders the halls and shrinks into herself. The long middle at Manderley tests your patience, no argument. Follow that slow dread, since the emptiness carries meaning: it shows how it feels to live inside a life someone else left behind. Then the housekeeper appears, worshipping the dead and scorning the living, and the hush turns into something you cannot put down.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

The book asks something strange of you: that you share the narrator's relief at a late revelation most readers would find chilling, and never question taking her side. Du Maurier gets away with it through sheer atmosphere. She also borrows the Jane Eyre floor plan down to the burning house, and the middle stretch at Manderley idles.

— the honest librarian