The Scapegoat (Virago Modern Classics)

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Strangely enough, The Scapegoat did not attract the same attention, although it is just as powerful a story. Originally, in the Old Testament book of Leviticus, the High Priest confessed the sins of the people on the Day of Atonement over the head of a live goat which was then allowed to escape, taking the sins with it.

The sheer theatricality of life is on display in The Scapegoat, as Jean is torn between a surreal nightmare and a comedy, between a farce and realism of a tragedy. As with many of Daphne du Maurier's novels, there are so many elements of mystery that it is sometimes rather like reading a detective story. Intrigued despite himself, John plays along with the Count's wishes, indulging in a night of drinking, and staying in an anonymous downbeat hotel overnight. In using book covers or other images on this site, no copyright infringement is intended by the site author. In The Scapegoat, her ancestral glass-blowing foundry became the failing business of the de Gué family.You will need to seriously suspend disbelief for this story as it’s highly implausible and yet it had me intrigued from start to finish. If everything in the book is supposed to be taken literally, then we need to suspend belief at times: could two men really be so identical that even their mother, wife and daughter can't tell the difference? Memo to myself: don’t be so dismissive of books written before I was born – I can learn much from them and the medicine to cure my phobia is simple enough, seek out my next one PDQ. And instead of writing herself into the story, the author took on the guise of a male narrator, one of five occasions in major novels when she did this. As the days pass, we find out, along with John, who is who in the large family of Jean ('Monsieur le Comte'), the relationships between them and the past events that led to the present state of affairs.

John soon feels he is out of his depth: “ I had plunged into this unknown world like a reckless walker into a morass, each step taking him deeper, each wild flounder committing him more inescapably” [Daphne du Maurier, 1957: 203]. At the start of the novel we learnt that John is dissatisfied with his life as a university lecturer, and tending to become depressed with what he sees as a futile life. The reading became compulsive, as I yearned to know what would happen next and how would John get himself out of the several situations that presented to him. The story has been the basis of two films: one in 1959 starring Alec Guinness and Bette Davis and one in 2012 starring Matthew Rhys.

Someone jolted my elbow as I drank and said 'Je sous demande pardon," and as I moved to give him space he turned and stared at me and I at him, and I realized with a strange sense of shock and fear and nausea all combined, that his face and voice were known to me too well. I think even the most skeptical readers can suspend disbelief, in this masterfully written fiction novel), . filled with an intense desire to get away from that dingy, shabby hotel and never set eyes on it again, and as my anger rose and self-disgust took possession of me.

But, when the story of deception begins, instead of it being suspenseful and intriguing, the whole structure collapses with the story stepping onto unrealistic grounds and taking a monotonous path. Like the second Mrs de Winter, he is relatively naïve and is removed from the “real life” initially, going later on both the physical and on the spiritual journey to get to know the depths of life, changing himself in the process. All the while, though the reader is hoping this man will succeed, du Maurier in her inimitable fashion leaves you feeling that it cannot possibly end well.Jean then announces that he has sold John's London flat, resigned from his university job, and cleared out his bank account, so John's old self is effectively gone forever. A life with a precocious daughter, a heavily pregnant wife, lots of adultery, an ailing mother, unhappy siblings,a failing company and a village still struggling with the demons of a NAZI occupied past and how they dealt with the collaborators 15 years ago.

My only complaint with reading a Daphne du Maurier novel is that every book I pick up for some time afterwards pales in comparison. And here du Maurier is her usual expert self at both instilling alarm and suspense and also at the details. It was also the basis of a film broadcast in 2012 starring Matthew Rhys and written and directed by Charles Sturridge. So the Englishman steps into the Frenchman's shoes, and faces a variety of perplexing roles - as owner of a chateau, director of a failing business, head of a fractious family, and master of nothing.Adrian Harrington began trading in 1971, as part of Harrington Brothers in the Chelsea Antiques Market on London's fashionable King's Road. It is precisely the book’s surreal qualities that give the novel its own peculiar dreamy charm instantly recognisable as du Maurier very own. I do not reveal the end in other novels or short stories by Daphne du Maurier because there is a final twist.