June 20, 2021

Yesterday, my husband and I went to an Irish pub with some friends to watch the Poland/Spain Euro game. It's been tough to find a bar in LA with the right atmosphere, but this place definitely had it. It was still expensive, because it was LA, but it was dark and there was wood everywhere, and they poured a beautiful Guinness. I would like to go back. Plus, look at this handsome guy: 

He's the goalkeeper for Poland. He was on the TV. He didn't like work there or anything. 

I was walking and talking to a writer friend, yesterday. He'd been running lots of details about his story past me, wanting my opinion. (We'd talked about it on two additional occasions in the past week.) I finally asked him why he kept checking so much. I figured it was perfectionism or lack of confidence. He admitted it was just him being lazy, out sourcing any decision he didn't feel strongly about. But omg, that's like half of what writing is -- just making a bunch of decisions. When I was feeling like he was kind of expecting me to write the thing for him, he kind of was. I should bring up my objections to things earlier and more often. 

Blog time! 

Du Maurier, Daphne – MY COUSIN RACHEL

Published: 1951

Read: 6/2021

Philip Ashley is the protagonist and first person narrator. It’s the 1800s, and Philip’s been raised on a large Cornish estate by his older cousin Ambrose. Ambrose and Philip look a like and share nearly everything in common, including a distrust of women. There’s no women in the household, and other than an obligatory time at Oxford, Philip has no experience outside of his estate. Ambrose goes on a trip to Italy and meets a woman, his cousin Rachel. He falls in love, writing as much back to Philip in England, and marries. Before he can return home with his new wife, however, he dies. Philip receives letters in which Ambrose suspects Rachel might be poisoning. Philip goes to Florence but finds that Rachel has left. Then, Rachel shows up in England. By then, Philip has built up a hatred for her, but she wins him over completely. He falls in love with her, ignoring warnings of her and her family’s fecklessness and extravagance, of his friends warnings that she’s using him for his money, and a many-week fever. When he comes into his fortune on his 25th birthday, Philip gives the whole estate to Rachel, with the condition that if she marries or dies, it reverts back to him. Philip and Rachel have sex the night he delivers the will to her. She agrees to marry him, or at least that’s what he thinks, but in the morning, after reading the will, she says she’ll do no such thing. 

Philip starts to suspect Rachel’s been poisoning him when he finds pods from a poisonous plant in her bureau. He confides in his friend Louise, at last, suspecting the worst. They search Rachel’s things but find nothing incriminating. Meanwhile, Rachel has gone for a walk near the sunken gardens, which are just being built and which Philip has been warned have a bridge that looks secure but really isn’t. Philip has the chance to warn Rachel about it, but he doesn’t. She falls and dies, leaving Philip uncertain as to whether she was a grifter or not. 

This book was remarkable. Philip is such a cloistered, entitled dummy. He and Ambrose’s complete dislike and distrust of women of course means that they’re the first to fall for a real woman’s charms. My personal take on what happened is that Rachel is a grifter, but she also grew to have a soft spot for Philip. That’s why she didn’t kill him (although maybe he really did just get meningitis), and that’s why she returned the family jewels to the bank for safe keeping, and why she stayed in England for so long. She’s a grifter because she’s needed to be that in order to survive, but she’s also not a sociopath. 

This book got me though. All throughout I was screaming – Philip, you dummy! Don’t give her the family jewels! And then the end makes you question whether her deviousness was so obvious after all. God, Philip is childish though. Needy, selfish, obstinate. It’s a tonally very dark and creepy book, which is at odds with how ridiculous and comical Philip’s behavior is. The book is tense, in a thriller kind of way but also like a joke before the punchline. And in the end, it never delivers the release. Pretty fucking bold. 

Rating: ★★★★