"My Cousin Rachel" Daphne du Maurier

"From the Library of Rose Mary Waggoner" is on the inside cover of the copy of the book I read.  It is one of those Doubleday editions that all homes had in the 50s and 60s.  Mom was always a member of some book club or other, so I don't know if this was purchased from there or as a gift or what, but she had du Maurier, Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck and other classic writers in sets of 3 books each.  I inherited many of them after she died when Dad wanted her books removed.  I donated 28 boxes to the Planned Parenthood sale, but kept a few like this one.

I might have read this book when I was young, but can't remember.  So it is not clear whether my apprehension of what might happen to Phillip is based on prior forgotten knowledge, previous experience with du Maurier in general or just the hints she drops about the danger he may or may not be in.  I kept cringing, saying, "Phillip, don't!" to keep him from falling into the traps being left for him by Rachel.

I found the writing contemporary enough to follow easily and in some ways less British than recent reads, like "The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry" or "Remarkable Creatures" where I had to interpret what was meant by words that had a different usage in England than in the U.S.  It is not clear what era "Rachel" is set in.  Published in 1951, the modes of transportation indicate an earlier time period.  If I knew more English history, I could probably make sense of it, but is is possible that du Maurier was not careful with time.  The behaviors of the servants seems an anachronism for the Victorian era, but, except for Rachel who grew up in Italy, the observations of women's behavior could fit the Georgian times of Austen's writing even if the use of language does not.  Phillip and Rachel spend time in her boudoir, as it is called in the book, treating it as a sitting room.  She is a sort of stepmother to him, but the intimacy seems a little too much for either Georgian or Victorian literature.  I looked online and couldn't find anything about this.

Rachel is like the girl that Amy describes in "Gone Girl."  The girl men want but doesn't really exist.  Rachel does everything Phillip wants - she let's him smoke around her, she becomes knowledgeble about the estate and the tenants, etc.  Phillip should have realized she was too good to be true.

I find the story inferior to "Rebecca."  There is sufficient tension built up throughout the story, with breaks now and then, but I might be a little jaded and am expecting disaster to strike.  The unknown elements of the ending are unsettling.  In some ways I want the Hollywood ending where everything turns out okay for the good guys, but we are left with "They used to hang men at Four Turnings in the old days.  Not any more, though."  Maybe there was a specific conclusion we are to infer from this, and reading it 60 years ago would have made it clearer, but now I'm not sure whether that means they don't hang men anymore, or if they don't hang them at Four Turnings, or what.