"If only there could be an invention," I said impulsively, "that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again." - Daphne du Maurier
Last year sometime, a friend of mine suggested a book to me. I eventually picked it up at a book sale, but because I had other books I had planned to read first, it was not until this summer that I finally got around to reading it. I love many books and genres, and so this one I suppose was really just another novel to add to my "read" list - I find it hard to choose a favorite. But I find that each in its own way becomes part of my life - each story has somehow happened not just to the characters on the pages, but to me as well, and I have in turn contributed to it with my own interpretations, emotions, and circumstances. So many things have happened between the pages of a book - cups of tea were sipped, minutes passed slowly in a waiting room, receipts, post-its, and letters found themselves holding a place as dinner was called or a phone was answered. These moments will probably be forgotten one day, as will the plot of the story and the characters that lived it, but nevertheless each novel finds a special place in heart and memory, brings new inspiration, and hopes to be revisited someday. But I almost forgot... I was going to talk about a novel I read this summer. The book was "Rebecca", by Daphne du Maurier.
I suppose there's really not much to say besides - read it! It has an interesting and unique plot, one I had not yet come across in any variation. But that's all I'll say about that. ;) Perhaps the most fascinating part of the book for me was the mystery, or lack, of the main character's name... I wonder if Ms. du Maurier knew it? But what I liked best about her writing was her attention to time and age, specific moments and moods:
'Packing up. The nagging worry of departure. Lost keys, unwritten labels, tissue paper lying on the floor. I hate it all. Even now, when I have done so much of it... I am aware of sadness, of a sense of loss. Here, I say, we have lived, we have been happy. This has been ours, however brief the time. Though two nights only have been spent beneath a roof, yet we leave something of ourselves behind. Nothing material, not a hair-pin on a dressing-table, not an empty bottle of aspirin tablets, not a handkerchief beneath a pillow, but something indefinable, a moment of our lives, a thought, a mood.
This house sheltered us, we spoke, we loved within those walls. That was yesterday. To-day we pass on, we see it no more, and we are different, changed in some infinitesimal way. We can never be quite the same again.'
