Author: Daphne du Maurier
Title: Don’t Look Now & Other Stories
Year of publication: 1971
Page count: 272
Rating: ★
This collection of five novellas had been on my to-read list since I read Stephen King’s Danse Macabre over a decade ago—I have enjoyed several du Maurier novels, I’d even go as far as saying that Rebecca is among my favorite books ever, so I had high hopes for this one—but boy, were those hopes ever dashed to death against the jagged cliffs of the Cornish seaside they were not set on.
The gothic atmosphere is what I love about du Maurier’s works, and all the novels I’ve read so far were set in Cornwall; all five of these stories of supposed mystery and slow, creeping horror were not. Each of the tales involves one or more British nationals taking a vacation for a change of scenery, only to be confronted with more than they’d bargained for. The fact that this is a constant theme in the collection is the only good thing I have to say about it: Each story fails to really develop the uncanny, oppressive atmosphere du Maurier is usually a master at, and I strongly suspect the geographic settings being at fault. I’d wager that she has probably visited all the places she writes about here—Venice, Crete, Ireland, Jerusalem—but they aren’t in her blood the way Cornwall clearly is, and I know she’s much better at setting the scene than what she put on display here. These novellas should also have been short stories instead, they are all much longer than they ought to be, for very little payoff: When a twist was involved, you could see it coming, and the endings were often unsatisfying. It pains me to give du Maurier one star—her stunning prose usually manages to redeem a lot of faults—but there simply wasn’t a single story here that I enjoyed, and I probably would’ve given up on the collection if it hadn’t been her name on the cover. Looking at other reviews, it seems that I am in an almost non-existent minority, yet here we are: my first du Maurier disappointment.
Don’t Look Now · ★★
The first story collected is one of du Maurier most well-known tales, and supposedly far and away the best in the collection—which didn’t bode well, because I really didn’t like it all that much. John and his grief-stricken wife are vacationing in Venice following the death of their daughter, when they encounter old identical twin sisters, one of whom claims to have psychic powers, and that not only is their deceased daughter trying to warn them that they are in mortal danger if they remain in Venice, but also that John has second sight as well, but doesn’t realize it. There is a delicious pervading sense of foreboding throughout the story, but I don’t think I like it when she dabbles in the supernatural. The ending felt very put-on, it actually made me roll my eyes, so I didn’t like where the story went… but that aside, it’s a pretty eerie exploration of what happens when you’re provided an answer without understanding the question.
Not After Midnight · ★½
This oblique story fuses a murder mystery with Greek mythology when a school headmaster with a hobby for painting decides to take a solitary holiday on Crete, where he finds out that his private chalet’s previous occupant drowned during a night swim. However, his otherwise perfect stay is marred only by a drunken and obnoxious American and his silent and apparently deaf wife, and he eventually finds himself spying on them, only to find that they are up to no good, and getting tangled up in their dealings against his better judgement… this is a clear example of much more happening in the author’s head than is conveyed on the page; du Maurier doesn’t give the reader a lot to go on. It could have used a bit more editing, and the conclusion doesn’t really seem to fit the very dramatic beginning in a rather jarring, confusing way.
A Border-Line Case · ★
A 19-year-old aspiring actress is looking after her ill father, who appears to be improving, reminiscing about a former friend with whom he never reconciled after falling out of touch, when suddenly and unexpectedly, he stares at her with a look of horror and disbelief on his face, and dies. Feeling the need to reconcile her late father’s relationship with the man he was thinking about just before he passed, the daughter travels to Ireland in search of his old friend, who is thought to have become an insane recluse. I had high hopes for this story when it started out, and the lack of supernatural elements was a welcome change from the first two stories, but I hated where it went, including the political turn; I saw the twist coming from miles away, which made a certain turn of events even more icky.
The Way of the Cross · ★½
A disparate group of middle-class neighbors take a sight-seeing cruise to the Middle East led by their vicar, who falls ill just before a planned day excursion to Jerusalem. A young and inexperienced minister takes his place, and finds himself unable to deal with all the individual ways in which each member of the party is unsatisfied with their lives and relationships. During the short tour, people overhear things about themselves that force them to re-evaluate their lives, and several others experience mishaps. There was something about it that reminded me of a soap opera—adultery, misunderstandings, humiliations—and I can’t say that I saw the point of it at all.
The Breakthrough · ★★
The final story is a bit of an outlier in that it doesn’t take place abroad, but still somewhere unfamiliar to the protagonist: On the salt marshes of the British East coast, at an isolated laboratory near a U.S. military base. An electrical engineer is sent there by his employer with no further details, and finds out on arrival that the eccentric head-scientist is working on a project to trap a human’s psychic energy at the moment of death. This story strongly flirts with sci-fi, which must be why it put me in mind of my least-favorite du Maurier novel, The House on the Strand, but also a sort of reverse Frankenstein? I liked that it tackled the experiment from a moral and ethical side, but the casual ableism was just unnecessary.
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