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3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism
Moderate: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Misogyny
Minor: Death of parent
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I bought this book at one of the Angus & Robertson book stalls that randomly appear and disappear in Aussie shopping centres. To me, they’re always worth a look because of the cheap paperbacks and the opportunity to try new authors. I had heard of Rebecca before buying Jamaica Inn, but decided to give this a go because Rebecca wasn’t available.
My first impression was of Wuthering Heights- you’ve got the moors, the dark and evil uncle, brooding buildings…but it was the sheer cruelty that got to me. Joss and others are cruel and careless of human life just like in Wuthering Heights. I think a psychiatrist could have some in depth analysis with the characters in this book!
Jamaica Inn is set in the 1820s and focuses on a lonely inn in Cornwell where Mary Yellan is forced to move to stay with her aunt after the death of her mother. She finds her aunt a shade of her former self, dominated by Joss Merlyn. Mary realises early on that Joss is up to no good, nor is his brother Jem (who cheerfully admits that he is a horse stealer). Mary experiences Joss’s cruelties first hand and when she tries to make a stand, she finds that not all is as it seems at Jamaica Inn…
This is a dark book with very little hope and light for the characters. Mary appears to be stuck, with little way to turn to escape. It’s not an uplifting read, though interesting for the crime of smuggling and destruction of sailing ships. (I’m not giving much away by telling you that, Mary herself guesses it quite early in the peace). I’m interested to read Rebecca now to see how it compares. Du Maurier writes very vividly and I think she could tell a ghost story very well.
My first impression was of Wuthering Heights- you’ve got the moors, the dark and evil uncle, brooding buildings…but it was the sheer cruelty that got to me. Joss and others are cruel and careless of human life just like in Wuthering Heights. I think a psychiatrist could have some in depth analysis with the characters in this book!
Jamaica Inn is set in the 1820s and focuses on a lonely inn in Cornwell where Mary Yellan is forced to move to stay with her aunt after the death of her mother. She finds her aunt a shade of her former self, dominated by Joss Merlyn. Mary realises early on that Joss is up to no good, nor is his brother Jem (who cheerfully admits that he is a horse stealer). Mary experiences Joss’s cruelties first hand and when she tries to make a stand, she finds that not all is as it seems at Jamaica Inn…
This is a dark book with very little hope and light for the characters. Mary appears to be stuck, with little way to turn to escape. It’s not an uplifting read, though interesting for the crime of smuggling and destruction of sailing ships. (I’m not giving much away by telling you that, Mary herself guesses it quite early in the peace). I’m interested to read Rebecca now to see how it compares. Du Maurier writes very vividly and I think she could tell a ghost story very well.
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
BRUTAL.
Mary Yellan is twenty-three. It’s circa 1815 in Cornwall, England, which means things ain’t good for single women. Though her mother was able to sustain a small farm for a several years after the death of her husband, after Mary’s mother dies the neighbors up and sell the place without consulting the remaining resident. I guess they could do that back then.
We meet Mary as she rides in a rickety, freezing carriage in the most hellacious rain storm ever from her home to Bodmin Moor, an actual dreary place of about “twenty-odd mile of moor,” with marshes to swallow you (or your murdered corpse) whole without evidence. She is to live with her mother’s sister, Aunt Patience, who married Joss Merlyn since Mary last saw her about ten years ago. My, how marriage to a man like Joss, and at a place like Jamaica Inn, changes a woman. . .
Jamaica Inn is feared by most everyone. No one patronizes the place, begging the question: how does an inn without patrons survive? You may better ask how anyone survives in this du Maurier tale. Joss Merlyn is one of the scariest characters I’ve ever encountered in fiction:
Maybe it’s my experience reading No Visible Bruises, which I’ve mentioned about 1,000 since I read it, but I was quaking the way Joss set down rules for Mary that include the threat of bodily and mental harm:
Mary has to snoop around despite being threatened to stay in her room and hide under her blankets if she hears anything odd at night. When horses and men arrive at ungodly hours, she learns just a modicum of the evil her uncle capable of. One man won’t help the other men in whatever it is they’re doing (the big reveal hasn’t happened yet). Joss Merlyn replies to his protests:
Jem Merlyn is Joss’s much younger brother. He’s a jolly thief who knows Joss’s secrets (so can he be trusted, and is he involved?), but he’s taken a liking to Mary. His good looks (though similar-ish to Joss’s facial features so we never forget with whom we are dealing) capture Mary’s heart in a way that makes her angry. Why do we like one person, even when we shouldn’t, she asks. When Jem and Mary run off to a fair in Launceston without telling Joss, they have a splendid time, making this reader root a bit for Mary and the scalawag who sells a horse owner his own stolen (and dyed) animal back. What a riot to Mary and Jem! But Jem disappears, leaving Mary in a town she doesn’t know in the pouring, hellacious rain, miles from home or a trusted face. How will she get back before Joss discovers her absence and utterly destroys her?
It’s hard to tell who is flawed but good versus good but hiding their relationship with Joss. Whenever I felt mildly lulled into thinking Mary would survive, something violent would be revealed or said. I feared for Mary on every single page, frequently stopping to read a particularly brutal passage aloud to my husband (such as the hanging paragraph above) so we could sit there and stare, mouths agape, at each other. Oh, you learn Joss’s secret, the one that plagues his dreams when he’s drunk but doesn’t make him bat his eye while sober. It’s one of the worst I’ve read and it utterly terrified me for both it’s horribleness and people’s willingness to participate without remorse.
Jamaica Inn is highly recommended, and I can easily see me reading it again in the near future. Dare I say I was more engrossed than when I read Rebecca? I dare. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to do the review justice because the book affected me greatly.
This review was originally published at Grab the Lapels and includes lots of Metalocaplys gifs to emphasize the burtality of du Maurier's novel.
On read-through #2 it took me 41 days to read this aloud to my husband.
Mary Yellan is twenty-three. It’s circa 1815 in Cornwall, England, which means things ain’t good for single women. Though her mother was able to sustain a small farm for a several years after the death of her husband, after Mary’s mother dies the neighbors up and sell the place without consulting the remaining resident. I guess they could do that back then.
We meet Mary as she rides in a rickety, freezing carriage in the most hellacious rain storm ever from her home to Bodmin Moor, an actual dreary place of about “twenty-odd mile of moor,” with marshes to swallow you (or your murdered corpse) whole without evidence. She is to live with her mother’s sister, Aunt Patience, who married Joss Merlyn since Mary last saw her about ten years ago. My, how marriage to a man like Joss, and at a place like Jamaica Inn, changes a woman. . .
Jamaica Inn is feared by most everyone. No one patronizes the place, begging the question: how does an inn without patrons survive? You may better ask how anyone survives in this du Maurier tale. Joss Merlyn is one of the scariest characters I’ve ever encountered in fiction:
He was a great husk of a man, nearly seven feet high. . . . He looked as if he had the strength of a horse, with immense powerful shoulders, long arms that reached almost to his knees, and large fists like hams. . . . [H]is nose was hooked, curving to a mouth that might have been perfect once but was now sunken and fallen, and there was still something fine about his great dark eyes, in spite of the lines and pouches and the red blood-flecks.Okay, Joss is giant. What’s the big deal? He also does creepy things like this: “. . . thrusting his face into Mary’s and laying one great finger across her mouth [he asks] ‘Are you tame, or do you bite?'” So, he’s a brazen uncle. And maybe this would pass with, I dunno, someone, but everyone Mary met on her way to Jamaica Inn warned her that it was a deadly place with an evil proprietor.
Maybe it’s my experience reading No Visible Bruises, which I’ve mentioned about 1,000 since I read it, but I was quaking the way Joss set down rules for Mary that include the threat of bodily and mental harm:
“I tell you what it is, Mary Yellan,” he shouted. “I’m master in this house, and I’ll have you know it. You’ll do as you’re told, and help in the house and serve my customers, and I’ll not lay a finger on you. But, by God, if you open your mouth and squark, I’ll break you until you eat out of my hand the same as your aunt yonder.” (emphasis mine)The man fears nothing, and though Mary says that she would race to the police to tell on him if he did something bad to Aunt Patience and then return to be broken, you can’t help but feel like this tenacious young woman is an idiot. The atmospheric setting of fog, rain, and marshes, an empty tavern and rooms not fit to be let, all create an electricity running through each sentence that made me fearful, as if I were the one staring down the blood-shot eyes of the giant Uncle Joss.
Mary has to snoop around despite being threatened to stay in her room and hide under her blankets if she hears anything odd at night. When horses and men arrive at ungodly hours, she learns just a modicum of the evil her uncle capable of. One man won’t help the other men in whatever it is they’re doing (the big reveal hasn’t happened yet). Joss Merlyn replies to his protests:
“Have a care,” [Joss] said softly. “I heard another man say that once, and five minutes later he was treading on air. On the end of a rope it was, my friend, and his big toe missed the floor by half an inch. I asked him if he liked to be so near the ground, but he didn’t answer. The rope forced the tongue out of his mouth, and he bit it clean in half. They said afterwards he had taken seven and three-quarter minutes to die.”Mary wants to run away but can’t for two things: Aunt Patience can’t be left behind, and Mary doesn’t know who all is involved in whatever Joss is doing. It seems to be everyone in the area, and even the magistrate or a simple peddler could be loyal to Joss. It is when she is lost on the moors for hours that Mary is saved by Francis Davey, a vicar from a nearby village/civil parish called Altarnun. He’s an albino, a physical trait du Maurier uses to “other” him. But does she mean to warn us or make us unnecessarily fearful with his physical description? Give that the novel was published in 1936, it could be either.
Jem Merlyn is Joss’s much younger brother. He’s a jolly thief who knows Joss’s secrets (so can he be trusted, and is he involved?), but he’s taken a liking to Mary. His good looks (though similar-ish to Joss’s facial features so we never forget with whom we are dealing) capture Mary’s heart in a way that makes her angry. Why do we like one person, even when we shouldn’t, she asks. When Jem and Mary run off to a fair in Launceston without telling Joss, they have a splendid time, making this reader root a bit for Mary and the scalawag who sells a horse owner his own stolen (and dyed) animal back. What a riot to Mary and Jem! But Jem disappears, leaving Mary in a town she doesn’t know in the pouring, hellacious rain, miles from home or a trusted face. How will she get back before Joss discovers her absence and utterly destroys her?
It’s hard to tell who is flawed but good versus good but hiding their relationship with Joss. Whenever I felt mildly lulled into thinking Mary would survive, something violent would be revealed or said. I feared for Mary on every single page, frequently stopping to read a particularly brutal passage aloud to my husband (such as the hanging paragraph above) so we could sit there and stare, mouths agape, at each other. Oh, you learn Joss’s secret, the one that plagues his dreams when he’s drunk but doesn’t make him bat his eye while sober. It’s one of the worst I’ve read and it utterly terrified me for both it’s horribleness and people’s willingness to participate without remorse.
Jamaica Inn is highly recommended, and I can easily see me reading it again in the near future. Dare I say I was more engrossed than when I read Rebecca? I dare. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to do the review justice because the book affected me greatly.
This review was originally published at Grab the Lapels and includes lots of Metalocaplys gifs to emphasize the burtality of du Maurier's novel.
On read-through #2 it took me 41 days to read this aloud to my husband.
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
My first ever Daphne du Maurier book I have listened/read. It was a complete surprise. I loved it. Brilliant. I had read specific reviews on this audio book version where I have seen quite a few negative reviews on the narrator doing a female voice. This did not put me off and I thoroughly enjoyed the story, performance and as for the author. What a talent! A marvellous book indeed.
This is the first du Maurier novel I've read, and it didn't disappoint. I chose this because I planned to visit Bodmin Moor as well as the real Jamaica Inn later this year if the Coronavirus allows. I also never like to read whatever is supposedly an author's best novel (in du Maurier's case, Rebecca) first, because it's nice to think "this is pretty good, and there's apparently a better one, too."
There is a lot of action and suspense packed into this novel. The main character is a young woman named Mary Yellan who, at the start of the book, is going to live with her aunt and her aunt's husband after her mother's death. This sets off a story that could have been a book in the Series of Unfortunate Events.
I was prepared to be disappointed due to the book's age and the possibility of a woman who was too much of a goody-two-shoes or that the story would be told from a domestic/gossip view. This was not the case at all, but there were nevertheless different outdated views on show (all forgivable though, and possibly explainable due to the book being set in the early 1800s).
There is a lot of action and suspense packed into this novel. The main character is a young woman named Mary Yellan who, at the start of the book, is going to live with her aunt and her aunt's husband after her mother's death. This sets off a story that could have been a book in the Series of Unfortunate Events.
I was prepared to be disappointed due to the book's age and the possibility of a woman who was too much of a goody-two-shoes or that the story would be told from a domestic/gossip view. This was not the case at all, but there were nevertheless different outdated views on show (all forgivable though, and possibly explainable due to the book being set in the early 1800s).
Well, this book was...not what I was expecting, for sure. Absolutely crazy.