
English Berries and Cream tea and one of my favorite mysteries
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” I could have uttered the best-loved first line myself. Though it’d been years since I read the novel, I instantly remembered. Manderley. How could I ever forget?
I returned to Rebecca for its strong sense of place. I, like the novel’s characters, am enchanted with the setting. The blood-red rhododendrons, the dark woods, the restless sea—they are as real to me as my own wooden fence. Never mind I haven’t been to Cornwall, the place Daphne du Maurier imagined as she wrote the novel (“Author’s Note”). I’ve been to Manderley, and that’s even better.