The Scapegoat (Virago Modern Classics)

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John is regarded as the male counterpart of the second Mrs. De Winter in Rebecca. I can see where that idea is coming from. Strangely enough, The Scapegoat did not attract the same attention, although it is just as powerful a story. Evil Jean conks him out with booze, changes John's identity into his own privileged, noble one- then exits, stage right. Due to his depression - he walked the streets at night in the rain and knew he must get drunk. He also was thinking of spending a few days at a monastery in hopes of finding the courage to go on living before returning to England. emerge. This being an Alec Guinness film. It never developed that way, but several times it seemed on the brink. There are recurring themes in this novel. Take the motif of a broken ornament, for instance. In "Rebecca", the episode where the new wife accidentally destroys a valuable china ornament given to her predecessor (Rebecca) on her marriage, and becoming a particular favourite, is powerfully symbolic. Here there is a similar event involving Anne-Marie and her mother, and a porcelain cat and dog,

I've often fantasized about escaping my own life and transplanting somewhere else entirely. Better yet, trade places with my dog, Zelda. Du Maurier explores that idea here, through the characters of John (the English man) and Jean (the French man) who meet by chance one night and discover that while they might be strangers, they look exactly alike. Time for the old switcheroo? Daphne du Maurier was obsessed with the past. She intensively researched the lives of Francis and Anthony Bacon, the history of Cornwall, the Regency period, and nineteenth-century France and England. Above all, however, she was obsessed with her own family history, which she chronicled in Gerald: A Portrait, a biography of her father; The du Mauriers, a study of her family which focused on her grandfather, George du Maurier, the novelist and illustrator for Punch; The Glassblowers, a novel based upon the lives of her du Maurier ancestors; and Growing Pains, an autobiography that ignores nearly 50 years of her life in favour of the joyful and more romantic period of her youth. Daphne du Maurier can best be understood in terms of her remarkable and paradoxical family, the ghosts which haunted her life and fiction. I really wasn't expecting to get completely hooked to this story, but after a certain point that was exactly what happened and I didn't care about anything other than what was going to happen next at St. Gilles! I could not ask forgiveness for something I had not done. As scapegoat, I could only bear the fault. Throughout the book, I was forced to revise my opinions once or twice about what was really going on. If everything in the book is supposed to be taken literally, then we need to suspend belief at times: could two men really be so identical that even their mother, wife and daughter can't tell the difference? There is also another way to interpret the story, one which goes deeper into the psychology of identity - I won't say any more about that here, but if you read the book this theory may occur to you too. I found the book very thought provoking.Years of study, years of training, the fluency with which I spoke their language, taught their history, described their culture, had never brought me closer to the people themselves. I was too diffident, too conscious of my own reserve. My knowledge was library knowledge, and my day-by-day experience no deeper than a tourist’s gleanings. The urge to know was with me, and the ache. The smell of the soil, the gleam of the wet roads, the faded paint of shutters masking windows through which I should never look, the grey faces of houses whose doors I should never enter, were to me an everlasting reproach, a reminder of distance, of nationality. Others could force an entrance and break the barrier down: not I. I should never be a Frenchman, never be one of them." Well, I do know why. This is one of the best books I've read this year - it is definitely the best fiction that is not a reread.

Jean vs John both of their appearances are the same and both speak relatively the same in voice. French vs English. High society life vs dull drum life. Family of complexity vs no Family. So why not take advantage of the situation and switch lives! The Scapegoat is a 1957 novel by Daphne du Maurier. In a bar in France, a lonely English academic on holiday meets his double, a French aristocrat who gets him drunk, swaps identities and disappears, leaving the Englishman to sort out the Frenchman's extensive financial and family problems. If only life were this simple. If only human relationships were straightforward, with little or no difficulties

Take a look around you, at all those vast legions of cynical, weary, burnt-out souls - lost in their private hells. Off to join my group and read what others are saying! A book so much richer than many of the newer fiction books I often read. Just sayin!

When John first arrives at the de Gue chateau, every member of the household is a stranger to him but we (and John) are given enough clues to gradually figure out who each person is and what their relationship is to Jean de Gue. From the neglected pregnant wife and the hostile elder sister to the resentful younger brother and the religious ten-year-old daughter, every character is well-drawn and memorable. The secret of life is to recognize the fact early on, and become reconciled. Then it no longer matters".

This classic gem is a piece of riveting. edge-of-your-seat suspense in the best tradition of the Queen of Cliffhangers. This story about two men who switch identities is so much more that what it seems on the surface. It brings a lot of self-introspection and often times has the reader asking, "What would I do in this situation?" The are memorable characters you won't soon (if ever) forget. The conflict is decidedly resolved in the way that works best, though, initially, I was not so sure of that. The language is rich and hugely descriptive – all in a good way – and as the tale gallops along more and more problems seem to crawl out of the woodwork. Can John possibly add value here, can he right the wrongs and solve some of the problems? He is certainly going to have his hands full as there is much to do if he is to right this particular ship. But the question that really bugs me is why doesn’t anyone seem to notice that he’s not Jean – not his brother, his mother or even his wife and child?] I'm not really sure what to take away from this novel. Main theme is greed and how it manifest in bad as well as good situations. I could not ask for forgiveness for something I had not done. As scapegoat, I could only bear the fault.”