The Scapegoat (Virago Modern Classics)

£9.9
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The Scapegoat (Virago Modern Classics)

The Scapegoat (Virago Modern Classics)

RRP: £99
Price: £9.9
£9.9 FREE Shipping

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Description

I really enjoyed Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel but I’d never heard of The Scapegoat before so thank you for sharing! A story that examines identity and fate in a thoughtful way, written in the author's elegant but provoking pen. It's a suspenseful psychological study as we learn the secrets of Jean's life through the eyes of John as he works out the relationships and family history. When Jean's chauffeur arrives at the hotel, John is unable to convince him of what has happened - and ends up accompanying the chauffeur to Jean de Gue's chateau, where the Frenchman's unsuspecting family assume that he really is Jean de Gue.

Even if I held their flagging interest for a brief half hour, I should know, when I had finished, that nothing I had said to them was of any value, that I had only given them images of history brightly coloured – wax-work models, puppet figures strutting through a charade. He loved France, where most of the history that he loved had happened; and he could lose himself in the past as he explored old streets in different cities, but there would always be something that pulled him back to the present day and a sad realisation.

Blending the surreal and the realist, du Maurier creates a fascinating psychological situation, a deep and intricate central character study and vivid minor characters, while touching on such themes as the nature of identity and the unpredictability of the human nature.

I’ve heard so many great things about this book, and your enticing review leaves me feeling all the more intrigued by it. Will John fool them all and turn his madcap Shadow's Evil plans into Good - and finally give his own life purpose in the process? It provides neither the delicious twist we have learnt to expect from this author, nor the massive ambiguity she can do so well. Seven days is all John got but what was accomplished in those seven days was remarkable changes for the whole family of Comte de Gué of St. Evil Jean conks him out with booze, changes John's identity into his own privileged, noble one- then exits, stage right.we get the opportunity to watch how the entire scenario - this crazy game - so to speak - affects each person. Thus none of the French associations are there, and in fact the story is entirely different, with different characters, different major and critical episodes - and even a different ending! The author showcases the absurdity of people’s everyday actions, and we, the readers, almost play the part of John’s accomplices in this melodrama of life since we, unlike other characters in the story, are aware of the “truth”. The family in the story is being exposed from a unique position – that of a stranger and an intimate confidant both at the same time. Next thing he knows, he’s been duped, tricked and drugged and is faced with the temptation of taking on a different person’s life – someone with a full life, living in a chateau with a large extended family, but also someone who turns out to be Not Very Nice, having led an idle life of minor cruelties, complete with wife and two mistresses, not engaging in the family firm; a wastrel.

Next day he wakes to find his clothes and possessions gone, with Jean's chauffeur urging him to get dressed (in Jean's clothes which are left for him) and come home to the ancestral château. That’s a good idea to read du Maurier’s works slowly because she has a number of good books and it is best to savour them! If everything in the book is supposed to be taken literally, then we need to suspend belief at times: could two men really be so identical that even their mother, wife and daughter can't tell the difference?A Du Maurier blueprint, containing all the elements which made her a much appreciated author of her times. The sheer theatricality of life is on display in The Scapegoat, as Jean is torn between a surreal nightmare and a comedy, between a farce and realism of a tragedy.



  • Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
  • EAN: 764486781913
  • Sold by: Fruugo

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