Day Eight

4/8

The Book: Jamaica Inn by Daphne DuMaurier

ISBN: 978-0-380-72539-7

Suggested By: A Fellow Graduate Student

Where: Home

When: 2:45-3:15p

Music: None

Company: Alone

Pages: 67-125 (58)

The Lead In: Is there anything funnier than when someone turns Jamaica into a verb? Like “Jamaicanme crack up” or other things along that vein? Hilarious.

The 411 on the 55: Mary meets her uncle Joss’ brother, Jem. He is a horse thief but charming in a romance novel sort of way. He flirts with her and then rides away. Soon after, while Joss is away, the sheriff rides into town and roots in the house, looking for loot. He finds none, and leaves angry. When her uncle returns, he is shaken by the news and heads off into the moors. Mary follows him but gets lost and is eventually rescued by the albino vicar, Francis Davey (did I just write that?). He cautions her about the whole business of smuggling that her uncle is involved in.

Soon after, Mary is wandering about and meets Jem again. She cooks him supper and again, he flirts with her. She seems to warm to him, but is constantly reminded of her uncle by his looks.

Line of the Day: “Mary looked up at the pale eyes in the colorless face, the halo of cropped white hair, and she thought again how strange a freak of nature was this man, who might be twenty-one, who might be sixty, and who with his soft, persuasive voice would compel her to admit every secret her heart possessed, had he the mind to ask her.” pg 105 

The Fact on the Fiction: The Jamaica Inn is a free house on the borders of Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. Built as a coaching house in 1750, it is famous for being the base of smugglers in the past and known as the setting for Daphne du Marier’s novel of the same name. The young author was inspired to write her novel when, having gone horseriding on the moors she became lost in thick fog and sought refuge at the inn; whilst recovering from her ordeal the local rector is supposed to have entertained her with ghost stories and tales of smuggling; he would later become the inspiration for the enigmatic character of the Vicar of Altarnun. Wikipedia