Myself When Young

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

Read for Daphne du Maurier Reading Week 2021 (and finished on her birthday!)

I enjoyed this memoir that covered du Maurier's early life, from childhood through the publication of her first book and ending with her marriage. It was fascinating to learn how she was already a storyteller from age four, wondering about and questioning the things and people around her, already creating her own imaginative world to escape the social mold expected of her. Her fascination with Cornwall and with the house Menabilly that figures so importantly in Rebecca and other novels is also interesting to learn about. But the writing gets sketchier and hastier at the end, as she finds freedom through her writing and then escapes on a boat with her new husband. The reality must have been more complex, but one senses that as in her fiction, she plays with both hiding and revealing information to the reader.