What I Learned From Listening to Rebecca

I love Daphne Du Maurier, though I’ve barely scratched the surface of everything she’s written. I’m currently reading the print version of Don’t Look Now and Other Stories. And I recently finished listening to the audio book of Rebecca, as read by Anne Massie. This is my first ever audiobook novel. This is what I learned:

• I didn’t think I would like listening to audiobooks. Turns out, I do.
• I didn’t think I’d consider that listening to an audiobook was the same as reading the print book, but I do.
• Anne Massie, RIP, reads beautifully. There’s 19 hours worth of text she had to get through. I genuinely don’t know how she did it without letting the quality drop.
• I worried I would miss bits while I was doing other jobs, and I did. But I didn’t lose the thread, (though that might be a function of having watched the movie).
• The opening chapter of Rebecca contains some of the most breath-taking description I’ve come across. She’s writing about Mandeley, of course. She never over-does it. She picks the right detail to draw a picture and set the tone. Everything in the book is affected by that opening chapter.
• I have an audible account through Amazon, which I’ve barely used. I listened to Taj Atwal reading Naomi Booth’s Sour Hall last year, and a version of Faust for my dissertation, plus Enron. It’s enjoyable to listen to these pieces while doing things around the house. I listened to Sour Hall while re-arranging my son’s bedroom.
• My plan is to listen to Jane Eyre next. The only Brontes novel I’ve read is Wuthering Heights, which was tremendous, though completely different from what I expected, (for which I blame Kate Bush!) The Brontes were born in the small village near Bradford in which my sister lives, so I feel a geographical connection to them. I just haven’t read much of their output. An audiobook seems like a good way to address that.
• The Jane Eyre audiobook is read by Thandiwe Newton, who I really like in movies. She has a very different voice from Anne Massie – not worse or better, just different. It’s less actorly, more normal.