Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is perhaps one of my most treasured reads from when I was a child. I read it when I was very young and haven’t revisited it in a while but the atmosphere of New Girl rings very close to what I remember of Rebecca.The book is skillfully crafted and the reader is unaware of how pervasive the missing girl’s presence is until the end of the novel when the main character…well, I will let you make that discovery for yourself. It is just one of those subtle things that I really liked and that showed that the author trusts in the intelligence of her readers. One of the greatest achievements of the book, in my opinion, is the creation of the atmosphere. It is not easy to create an atmosphere in a book. I mean, with a movie you can use visual effects, shadows etc but it gets more challenging with a book. Harbison is skilled enough to create an atmosphere that is parts menacing and sinister, parts mysterious and parts utter bewilderment.So I was quite pleased with the novel in terms of its loyalty to the tale it is retelling. With that said, if I were to look at the novel as a story without having an origination in the classic, I would have some trouble with it. Becca Normandy has a lot of sex – that is not at all a bad thing. What is bad, in my opinion, is that she is the negative character while the new girl does not have any sex and is, most obviously, the positive character. So you see what I’m getting at? It is unintentional and Rebecca’s problems were not that she liked sex but that she had a thing going on with another guy right underneath her boyfriend’s nose – which is not cool. I also was not charmed by Max Holloway. He seems like the usual egotistic broody dude and while I would usually jot it down to him being cheated upon, his continual treatment of the new girl did not win him any favors and the unfavorable light I see him in compounded by the fact that he remains a static character throughout the novel.The only character who goes through the changes and becomes an entirely stronger person is The New Girl which should explain why I ended up liking the novel. Strong main characters who know how to tell a jerk off are welcome. Would I recommend this book to you?Well, I think you should read Rebecca first and then The New Girl as the experience will be much more enriching that way. The New Girl may sit a bit uneasily with you because it shows us children who are much more adult than they should be and whose morals and values occupy that gray area that no one wants to question but everyone secretly judges.
