While contemporary writers were dealing critically with such subjects as the war, alienation, religion, poverty, Marxism, psychology and art, and experimenting with new techniques such as the stream of consciousness, du Maurier produced 'old-fashioned' novels with straightforward narratives that appealed to a popular audience's love of fantasy, adventure, sexuality and mystery. At an early age, she recognised that her readership was comprised principally of women, and she cultivated their loyal following through seve Years of study, years of training, the fluency with which I spoke their language, taught their history, described their culture, had never brought me closer to the people themselves. I was too diffident, too conscious of my own reserve. My knowledge was library knowledge, and my day-by-day experience no deeper than a tourist’s gleanings. The urge to know was with me, and the ache. The smell of the soil, the gleam of the wet roads, the faded paint of shutters masking windows through which I should never look, the grey faces of houses whose doors I should never enter, were to me an everlasting reproach, a reminder of distance, of nationality. Others could force an entrance and break the barrier down: not I. I should never be a Frenchman, never be one of them." Anyone that has ever hungered to be a part of a group, but yet always felt as a stranger, will relate to John here. What should happen, however, if you had the opportunity to take someone’s place? Would you do it? When John bumps into an exact likeness of himself in a tavern, he is given precisely this chance. While John is a lonely man with a feeling of emptiness inside, Comte Jean de Gué claims to have only the problem of having too many ‘human’ possessions. Jean wants to play a clever game – that of switching identities with John and assuming each other’s lives. When John wakes the next morning, stripped of his own clothes and everything he had on his person, what choice does he have but to put on another man’s clothes, take his suitcase and assume this new life?

Another instance provides part of the novel's setting. Houses often seem to take on a life of their own in Daphne du Maurier's novels. For example, "Manderley" in "Rebecca", seems to be imbued with as much of a presence - to be as much a character - as any of the actual people in the book. Indeed in her own life, she seems to have had an almost obsessive love for her "Menabilly" the house she rented for so many years. Here in France, as part of her research, Daphne du Maurier discovered a house that had belonged to one of her ancestors two hundred years earlier. Exploring the derelict buildings, she saw fragments of the glass they had made, still there, scattered by the wind. She used these impressions and experiences, drawing on them to create an atmospheric, dramatic suspense novel, set in France. This article consists almost entirely of a plot summary. It should be expanded to provide more balanced coverage that includes real-world context. Please edit the article to focus on discussing the work rather than merely reiterating the plot. ( November 2011) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)One had no right to play with other people's lives. One should not interfere with their emotions. A word, a look, a smile, a frown, did something to another human being, waking response or aversion, and a web was woven which had no beginning and no end, spreading outward and inward too, merging, entangling, so that the struggle of one depended on the struggle of the other." Daphne weaved a compelling tale from the off, from the mystery of the identical men to the shit-show that Jean's life is; but where she excels is the intricacies of the extended family's life and history; the multiple distinct voices and relationships with Jean, and then John, and just overall taking a superb suspense thriller and making it much more, very much more! 9 out of 12. The Scapegoat is a hidden gem buried deep within Du Maurier’s chest of treasure. Prepare to be astounded.

Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2010-07-22 14:57:11 Associated-names Rouben Mamoulian Collection (Library of Congress) Bookplateleaf 0003 Boxid IA1170101 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II Donor The story follows John, who tries his best to live his doppelgänger's life without making too many missteps or being discovered as a fraud. Turns out, the life he is to assume is a complicated one. Suddenly, he's a man with a depressed wife, a crumbling chateau, a failing glass foundry, a mistress in town, a mistress in the house, a sister who hasn't spoken to him in fifteen years, a troubled daughter and mysteriously ill mother. Plus a dark history that no one dares to speak of. It is an old-fashioned, psychologically excavated classic in its almost fantastic organization. I do not reveal the end in other novels or short stories by Daphne du Maurier because there is a final twist.Yet another Daphne du Maurier book that I struggled... to put down! French language academic John is astonished to bump into his exact doppelganger at a provincial French train station.