This classic gem is a piece of riveting. edge-of-your-seat suspense in the best tradition of the Queen of Cliffhangers. Thus, what follows is a compelling and unusual story which keeps the reader guessing right until the bitter end. Sinister and gripping, Du Maurier’s writing is wonderfully atmospheric and her descriptions of the hotel in Le Mans, the grounds of Jean de Gue’s estate in the French countryside and Bella’s antique shop in the town of Villars are every bit as evocative as that of her native Cornwall.

The story takes place over one very intense week, in which everything changes. The details are wonderful—daily life, the house and food, and the characters of Jean’s family, all of whom have secrets. This is a book about getting what you want and coping with it, about identity, about belonging. John is a colorless man forced to take on color and animation—a man forced into life. 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!Additionally, its Daphne du Maurier writing style lends to the book's approval. du Maurier's writing entertains the reader executing techniques like implementing her family history to tell the book's story, questioning of identity, and her writing style. In The Scapegoat du Maurier combines the first two factors as she "negotiates the tension between such stereotypes [French] and her own sense of French identity" (Horner 147). For example, the French stereotype of love affairs is prevalent with Jean's infidelity with Francoise. The narrator is used to do more than debacle the stereotype. In fact the reader finds, as the narrator does, that the love affair with Renee reveals the unsatisfying life of women during the book's period and the love affair with Blache reflects the human need for unquestioning companionship. The feeling of power, of triumph that I was outwitting this little group of unsuspecting people had turned again to shame. It seemed to me now that I wanted Jean de Gué to have been a different sort of man. I did not want to discover at each step that he was worthless... I had exchanged my own negligible self for a worthless personality. He had the supreme advantage over me in that he had not cared. Or had he, after all? Was this why he had disappeared?" I would give 4 stars to this book. However, the plot is very unlikely even that is captivating story. A quite disappointing end, I was expecting a more dramatic one. The story follows John, who tries his best to live his doppelgänger's life without making too many missteps or being discovered as a fraud. Turns out, the life he is to assume is a complicated one. Suddenly, he's a man with a depressed wife, a crumbling chateau, a failing glass foundry, a mistress in town, a mistress in the house, a sister who hasn't spoken to him in fifteen years, a troubled daughter and mysteriously ill mother. Plus a dark history that no one dares to speak of. Evil Jean conks him out with booze, changes John's identity into his own privileged, noble one- then exits, stage right.

The writing is really good and du Maurier is great at creating tension. The reading became compulsive, as I yearned to know what would happen next and how would John get himself out of the several situations that presented to him. I was especially curious to find out how everything would come about in the end. And it was precisely the ending that I found disappointing, although it's perfectly adequate. After all the suspense that built up in the last chapters, the end was a bit of an anticlimax... Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.John, our narrator, is a lonely academic, someone who always felt like an observer rather than a participant in life. Jean, on the other hand, describes himself as a "family man" who evidently doesn't enjoy the title and is only too happy to jump ship. Bakerman, Jane S. And Then There Were Nine-- More Women of Mystery. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular, 1985. Print. I wondered how much further I had to fall, and if the sense of shame that overwhelmed me was merely wallowing in darkness... I had played the coward long enough." I think the author's aim was to show how a person, unavoidably, changes the atmosphere around him or her, especially when he or she changes his/her behaviour patterns.

Just as an actor paints old lines upon a young face, or hides behind the part he must create, so the old anxious self that I knew too well could be submerged and forgotten, and the new self would be someone without a care, without responsibility, calling himself Jean de Gué... "Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2010-07-22 14:57:11 Associated-names Rouben Mamoulian Collection (Library of Congress) Bookplateleaf 0003 Boxid IA1170101 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II Donor 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. At one point halfway through the novel, John feels that he is trapped in a corner. He feels impotent, and that whatever he does will not work; he is sinking further and further into a morass of his own making. The author describes the scene outside the house,