The Housekeeper
Rose Tremain’s homage to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca began life as a short story published in 2014. It has subsequently become a movie screenplay, now in production, and now a full novel. Mixing biography and fiction, Tremain’s novel takes the reader, and Daphne du Maurier, to the Manderville estate, the sprawling home of Lord Grenville-Whithers, where she is given a tour by his housekeeper, Mrs. Danowski. It is 1936, and Danowski, known as Danni, is the narrator of the story. She’s reserved, self-contained, and was devoted to her late mistress. She and Daphne fall quickly into a passionate relationship. Many elements neatly echo Rebecca. The owner of Manderville is a widower who rarely visits his wife’s now-untouched rooms. He prefers the company of his dog – Basil, not Jasper – and while there is no second wife arriving, readers will enjoy the Manderville Bash and an illicit rendezvous in the boathouse in the cove. As with Rebecca, Tremain’s narrator tells her story from the near distant future. The relationship is over, and Danni is lost in melancholy, reliving events in an attempt to understand what went wrong and if she has miscast Daphne as the love of her life.
The Housekeeper is a poignant and moving novel that, while fictional, works successfully as a ‘what if’ story, blending facets of du Maurier’s biography, including her marriage, children, and relationships with women, into a clever origin story for her most famous work. Although it doesn’t hit the emotional heights of the story that inspired it, The Housekeeper stands up as an emotionally deep, heartfelt character study with believable characters and a tender love story that stood little chance in a time of ignorance and intolerance.
