I forget how I came across this, but it was until recently unknown to me. I have always enjoyed Du Maurier’s books – the usual suspects, that is: Jamaica Inn, Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel, Frenchman’s Creek, ‘The Birds’ and other of her short stories. Checking now I see there are many, many more to choose from. Doubtless each piece of fiction contains that unique undercurrent of menace that Du Maurier imparts to every novel she writes.
For this novel, set some years after WWII she has based it in Italy, specifically in ‘Ruffano’, a university town based on Urbino. The setting had a marvellous feel of Italy and Italians about it. The novel first came out in 1965, when Baby Boomers had begun to make their way into universities with their impatience with traditional values. Ruffano is a microcosm of the traditional faculty and the ‘business and economics’ students. Vespas abound. The students are full of energy and opinions. (Just as it should be, in fact.)
There is an annual festival in the city which pits factions against each other. The novel builds towards this as its climax. It is apparent from early on that something dreadful will occur during the festival. That is Du Maurier’s talent, after all.
For this book du Maurier uses a male narrator. One is used to du Maurier’s beautifully drawn, damaged female protagonists, but this is a young man. A lost soul. He returns to Ruffalo on a whim, and remains there in thrall to his own past in the city while the ominous clouds of the festival gather about him. I was surprised that Du Maurier essayed a first person male protagonist. But she really gets inside his head.
I love Italy, and the descriptive passages about the city made me want to visit it (although I dare say it is much changed now). There are some longueurs within the plot: the preparations for the festival seem to take a long time to put together; one knows the blow will fall at the festival, the mechanics of how that is to occur are visible throughout, and Du Maurier sure does make the reader wait for the denouement. But – as usual with Du Maurier – the author has a fine grasp of human nature, its capacity for forgiveness, its nobility and its baseness, and all three are given full rein as the story unfolds.
Judi Moore 