When I first came across this book in the summer of 2014, I absolutely couldn't believe it had never occurred to me to read a book about du Maurier's life even though I'd been obsessed with her for ages. It was only when I came across this same book this past summer in June at a Goodwill for the brilliant price of three bucks that I decided to take the plunge and peer into the life of my writing hero, despite whatever consequences of disillusionment might occur.
The three areas I will focus on in this discussion are Margaret Forster's depiction of du Maurier's development as a writer and the background she gives to her works, du Maurier's personal life, and finally my experience of reading the book itself.
I was most excited to learn more about du Maurier's writing life and how she came to be a writer. Forster starts off with a discussion of du Maurier's childhood and shows how her home environment was positively encouraging to "flights of fancy and fantasy." du Maurier's father was a well known actor and her mother was a retired actress and du Maurier spent a lot of time with her father at the theater and movie studios. Thus, it came as no surprise that she played so many make believe games with her sisters and often allowed herself to be swept away with her imagined musings about the various people she met.
Writing was also a creative outlet for du Maurier and Forster let us in on the conflicting personalities that governed her inner life. du Maurier had her own made up lingo for just about every aspect of her life and she called the two different sides to her personality Daphne number 1 and Daphne number 2. It was Daphne number 2 du Maurier could not give expression to in her daily life (I won't spoil, just read the biography and find out for yourself just what this consisted of!) and writing was her way of channeling this energy into a productive activity.
Of course du Maurier read voraciously growing up, which is absolutely a requirement for anyone who wishes to be a writer of this caliber.
Forster showed how all of this came together to make du Maurier into the natural storyteller that she was to become. I marveled at du Maurier's delightful ability to pluck stories out of the very air. She was never long without a story idea and everything she encountered in life was simply grist for the mill. But before she got down to her routine of churning out great stories every few months, the only real challenge du Maurier faced in starting out as a writer was the expected one of finding the discipline in herself to sit down and commit to a consistent regime of writing. Her first story came about only when she isolated herself from her usual routine and family and friends by staying at one of her families' vacation homes by herself and writing for a few weeks.
I loved how Forster showed that writing was no mere hobby to du Maurier but essentially her life. When du Maurier was in the process of coming up with a story, researching for it, and finally getting down to the writing of it, she truly lived. In between writing projects, du Maurier was simply waiting to live. She experienced complete absorption in her work and relished the entire process. Forster shows us how later on in her life, when du Maurier experienced such things as troubles in her marriage or grief of any kind, or if she just felt put out by some unpleasant circumstance or other, she would launch herself into a writing project because she knew that once she embarked on one she would be lost to the miseries of this world.
I was surprised to discover the range of du Maurier and how she did not only write fiction but also wrote several biographies, most notably one of her own father only months after his death. She also wrote about her beloved Cornwall, which along with writing, a house called Menabilly (yes, this was part of the inspiration for Manderley!), and long walks with her dogs were honestly her main passions in life.
My favorite aspect of this biography was the extensive detail Forster provided on the works of du Maurier, and honestly what I feel I will be turning back to in this book for years to come as I delve deeper into reading her books. Forster gives the background for basically everything du Maurier ever wrote and so much more! She tells us what events were going on in du Maurier's life at the time the idea for the book came about, what people might have influenced her, what the writing process was like, what her publishers thought about the book, what the editing process for it was like, what the general public thought of it, and finally du Maurier's opinion of her own writing. This was splendid for me! I can't say that I've read a lot of du Maurier at all and so this biography serves a great guide for me in deciding which of du Maurier's works I will be seeking out next. I thrilled at getting all those great insights into the creation of some of du Maurier's most famous works and feel that will only enrich my reading experience of them further when I finally get around to them. I was definitely surprised and intrigued to find out what inspired the character of Rachel in My Cousin Rachel, which I read this past year.
My admiration for du Maurier as a writer only increased after reading this biography, however, the insight Forster gave in regards to her personal life made me realize I would not necessarily like du Maurier as a person. du Maurier was a very difficult person. She was also very particular about how she liked things and when things didn't go her way she would go to great lengths to make everyone around her suffer. Or at least, one example of this from the biography was when du Maurier was in her eighties and would torment the nurses who looked after her just because she didn't like them and resented the fact that she had to have nurses in the first place.
du Maurier was also a very private person and throughout her life hated to give interviews and only did so grudgingly only late into her career and only after being begged and pleaded with. As I mentioned before, writing was du Maurier's life and everything else was secondary. Though this produced great genius in regards to her literary output, it made her personal life not very pleasant at times.
All of this, however, was not what made me realize I wouldn't like du Maurier. The clincher for me came when I read about how she treated her children. When she had her first child, she handed her off to a nurse and decided to concentrate on her writing because she realized she simply did not have the mothering instinct within her. That's not a crime, I was fine with that. Her second child was born and she felt the same way once again, leaving all the daily care and attention to nannies and nurses. However, her third child was born and she suddenly changed her entire attitude towards children and suddenly 'found' the mothering instinct! What was the difference? Her third child was a BOY! Yes, I couldn't believe it either. How could du Maurier, as a woman herself, do such a thing to her daughters? Reading about how she lavished all the love and attention she'd deprived of her two daughters on her son just made me rage!
Finally, let's turn to my experience of reading the book itself. My favorite thing about reading Forster's biography was marveling at just how exhaustively researched it was. The very clear picture Forster paints of who du Maurier was is backed up by evidence in every instance. Forster had access to all of du Maurier's correspondence, diaries, journals, and interviewed basically everyone du Maurier knew! Thus, Forster did not rely on speculation at all in writing this and that made me appreciate the biography that much more.
I'm glad I got to read to this book. The best thing it has done for me is given me a great guide to all of du Maurier's works and insight into how those came about. I will be turning to this biography a lot in the future whenever I want to read something else by du Maurier.
I've never read anything by Forster before, but if this biography is any indication of her writing abilities, I daresay I shall be checking out her work in the future!
Thus, to conclude, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recomend it to all and sundry! I give it a solid three stars out of five!
No comments:
Post a Comment