Jamaica Inn

Jamaica Inn 

by Daphne du Maurier
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really liked Rebecca, then I started My Cousin Rachel and couldn't get into it so I was not sure how reading Jamaica Inn would go. I ended up really enjoying it. 

"The coaches avoided Jamaica Inn, hidden in the harsh Cornish moors not far from the coast, for its name was evil, and no man knew what it's dark shutters hid. Yet it was to Jamaica Inn that Mary Yellsn went when her mother died, to join her aunt Patience and the man her aunt had married, Joss Merlyn, the landlord of the Inn. Only too soon was she to learn the full tale of its horror, though she stayed beneath its roof because of her aunt, so lovely once, so battered and haunted now." --Goodreads blurb

Like Rebecca this story has a female narrator who doesn't really understand what is happening around her but figures it out as the book goes along. It also has a similarly dark and gothic tone. The characters, both our heroine and the people around her are complex, interesting people. There were several points where the story took a turn I didn't see coming and it was very skillfully crafted.

After reading the book I watched the 1939 movie which was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and introduced Maureen O'Hara. I thought it was fairly dreadful. The story is much simplified from the one in the novel, characters are added and totally changed,  and all the suspense is sucked right out of the story by beginning the movie with an event that happens about 3/4 of the way into the book. 

Written in the 1930s and set in the 1820s this book is on my Classics Club list and I am also counting it toward the Historical Fiction Challenge and the What's in a Name Challenge (double letters in the title).