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A review by twylghast
Manderley Forever: The Life of Daphne du Maurier by Tatiana de Rosnay
slow-paced
2.0
So, where to start with this glorified published fanfiction about the Unmentioned? Feels fitting to not give her a name…if you catch my drift.
I think the author was the wrong person to write this book; she worships the subject so hard, she romanticizes every single action of hers to a weird level that’s annoying and sometimes uncomfortable…a good story has never been made by a goody two-shoes, when will authors realize that? Even the Unmentioned, dislike her work as I do, probably wasn’t a goody two-shoes (‘cause no one is)…so how fair is it to portray her like that?
The least you can give someone whose life story you think you’ve got the right to tell (sketchy premise from the start) is to either pass no judgement (without sugarcoating or picking and choosing what to showcase ‘cause why would you unless you were trying to further your own bs?) or pass judgement if you must, but not so much that it interferes with the story being told. Which is kind of what I feel like she’s doing here, tilted (of course) to the worshipping side, as in, hiding whatever flaws Daphne could have had, romanticizing every inch of her life, making it seem like she had the hots for daddy (did the author have the hots for daddy, perhaps?) and basically living vicariously through the person whose story she thought she’d do well to tell…it’s not that Daphne’s (there, I’ve said her name twice, now let me burn in hell) story doesn’t deserve to be told, it’s actually the opposite.
I don’t like her, or what I perceive of her, but no one deserves to have their life distilled and romanticized the way it’s being done here…if someone did that to my life, I’d haunt them forever for it, would hate to be reduced to a vicarious husk for some useless idiot who isn’t interesting enough to live for herself, and the experience of reading that isn’t any better.
What bothers me most about this, though, isn’t only the bad Mary-Sue fanfic, idealizing aspect of it…it’s also that this is touted by the author as a biography, but it reads like a really bad, cheesy fanfic instead.
Maybe she should have just done what Philippa Gregory did, taken a story that was interesting, done cursory research, and then just taken it wherever she wanted it to go…oh, fuck, wait, isn’t that what she did?!
So, long story short, this is not for me. And not because I don’t like Daphne…but because this is not the way to write somebody’s biography. Should just have called it what it is; historical fanfiction.
I decided to keep going with this, and I actually finished it. It gets a bit better after the first half, but it is still annoyingly blind to Daphne’s flaws - namely that she doesn’t to give a shit about her kids or anything except her books and crushes, which seems to be is something the author admires, instead of having enough brain to consider maybe it - and she - is really not all that, talent (which I’m not sure she has) aside.
I guess I don’t really like Daphne or the author…unlike most of the world, I hate Rebecca, but reading this made me curious to give her (Daphne’s) other books a shot, so it’s not completely useless.
I think the author was the wrong person to write this book; she worships the subject so hard, she romanticizes every single action of hers to a weird level that’s annoying and sometimes uncomfortable…a good story has never been made by a goody two-shoes, when will authors realize that? Even the Unmentioned, dislike her work as I do, probably wasn’t a goody two-shoes (‘cause no one is)…so how fair is it to portray her like that?
The least you can give someone whose life story you think you’ve got the right to tell (sketchy premise from the start) is to either pass no judgement (without sugarcoating or picking and choosing what to showcase ‘cause why would you unless you were trying to further your own bs?) or pass judgement if you must, but not so much that it interferes with the story being told. Which is kind of what I feel like she’s doing here, tilted (of course) to the worshipping side, as in, hiding whatever flaws Daphne could have had, romanticizing every inch of her life, making it seem like she had the hots for daddy (did the author have the hots for daddy, perhaps?) and basically living vicariously through the person whose story she thought she’d do well to tell…it’s not that Daphne’s (there, I’ve said her name twice, now let me burn in hell) story doesn’t deserve to be told, it’s actually the opposite.
I don’t like her, or what I perceive of her, but no one deserves to have their life distilled and romanticized the way it’s being done here…if someone did that to my life, I’d haunt them forever for it, would hate to be reduced to a vicarious husk for some useless idiot who isn’t interesting enough to live for herself, and the experience of reading that isn’t any better.
What bothers me most about this, though, isn’t only the bad Mary-Sue fanfic, idealizing aspect of it…it’s also that this is touted by the author as a biography, but it reads like a really bad, cheesy fanfic instead.
Maybe she should have just done what Philippa Gregory did, taken a story that was interesting, done cursory research, and then just taken it wherever she wanted it to go…oh, fuck, wait, isn’t that what she did?!
So, long story short, this is not for me. And not because I don’t like Daphne…but because this is not the way to write somebody’s biography. Should just have called it what it is; historical fanfiction.
I decided to keep going with this, and I actually finished it. It gets a bit better after the first half, but it is still annoyingly blind to Daphne’s flaws - namely that she doesn’t to give a shit about her kids or anything except her books and crushes, which seems to be is something the author admires, instead of having enough brain to consider maybe it - and she - is really not all that, talent (which I’m not sure she has) aside.
I guess I don’t really like Daphne or the author…unlike most of the world, I hate Rebecca, but reading this made me curious to give her (Daphne’s) other books a shot, so it’s not completely useless.