Books

Just finished a Daphne DuMauier book called My Cousin Rachel. Wilhelm thought me narcissistic to check it out. I have heard of it for years, especially after reading her famous Rebecca, so it is really not my vanity, just mere interest. "Rachel" turns out to be snaky and unpredictable---I read it all in the past few days. It was sort of creepy---set in the first person and pretty much a close view of someone self-destructing. I like creepy books, I like it when people die at the end, and this has it all. I was just not convinced that the novel was set in Victorian times. The narrator spoke in too modern a way.

I am at the moment immersed in Wilkie Collin's book called No Name. I particularly like him.

I have this strange desire to pick up all the Hardy novels again and enjoy them. I find that I forget details as time goes by so it will be good to do that. Wilhelm just picked up a copy of Young Thomas Hardy at the used bookstore. I have been reading that too. It is really interesting because there is somewhat of a mystery with his life. He purposefully left out periods of his life in his own autobiography (the Life) and purposefully blotted out his own family (the poor side) on his family tree. It makes me laugh to think that he thought so badly of high society and it's views in his own novels but then disowns his low-class family because he wanted to be accepted so much by society. It sort of makes sense but it doesn't. It would not shock anyone to hear that he was obsessed with death and execution. I guess we could say the same about Dostoyevsky. Hardy's was an almost sensual feeling though.

Collins was never married and had two mistresses. Dickens could not stand his wife and had a mistress (or more I can't remember). George Eliot lived with her man and never married him. What is with these people?