[gmw]

I was just tidying up my Kobo annotations and found a few items to add to this thread. Things I highlighted as being of interest.

with a sharp expression which boded ill for those who crossed her.

du Maurier did this sort of thing a lot in this book - description foreshadowing behaviour - as if she didn't trust the reader to pick it up without being explicit. I found such apparent insecurity strange for so late in her career.

I was dead to her world. I might move about in it, mechanically, listening with half an ear as she peeled off her clothes and flung them on the bed, put on a wrapper, spread her lotions and creams on the dressing table, chatting all the while about the drive down, the day in London, happenings in New York, her brother’s business affairs, a dozen things that formed the pattern of her life, our life; but none of them concerned me. It was like hearing background music on the radio. I wanted to recapture the lost night and the darkness, the wind blowing down the valley, the sound of the sea breaking on the shore below Polpey farm, and the expression in Isolda’s eyes as she looked out of that painted wagon at Bodrugan.

Sometimes du Maurier's writing was almost disturbingly effective. No magical trips to the past are necessary to see this sort of disconnect between husband and wife as realistic. The chatter from Vita is there, showing us that this relationship was once a comfortable one, but Dick is now distracted, disconnected, and wanting to be somewhere else.

Roger would handle Vita to perfection. Her slightest whim obeyed. Juice of henbane whistled up from Brother Jean at the Priory to induce a restful night, and if that failed … I smiled.

A very nasty thought. It has potential to cast the almost-throttling-Vita event later in a different light. Should I see Dick as a more callous individual than I do? Or is this just one of those passing bits of nastiness that we see only because this is a first person narrative?

Magnus was dead; I should never see him again, never hear his voice, rejoice in his company or be aware of his presence in the background of my life, but the link between us would never be broken because the home that had been his was mine. Therefore I could not lose him. Therefore I should not be alone.

This seemed to me to tie to the drug and visiting the past. A similar sort of relationship, particularly with the house and Roger.