Day Seven

4/7

The Book: Jamaica Inn by Daphne DuMaurier

ISBN: 978-0-380-72539-7

Suggested By: A Fellow Graduate Student

Where: In Bed

When: 10P-10:55

Music: None

Company: The Family

Pages: 8-66(58)

The Lead In: This book was shelved in the book store under historical romance. I am holding out no high hopes, but will give every book a chance to hang itself. That’s the point of all this, to read that which I wouldn’t on my own. To allow others to push me to their bookshelves and pluck their favorites down and digest their thoughts and tastes. Growth.

The 411 on the 55: Mary Yellan is having a rough life. Her father died when she was young, leaving her mother and herself to work the farm without help. In the first chapter, her mother also leaves her, dead from simply working too hard. On her deathbed, she forces Mary to promise she will go live with her aunt and uncle. She agrees, reluctantly.

On the way to her uncle’s inn, she begins to hear rumors about how things are not well. No one respectable goes to the inn any longer and everyone is afraid to even pass by it at night. When she arrives, her uncle threatens her with all sorts of ills and sends her to bed. She considers leaving, but stays to help protect her traumatized aunt. The next night, she plays bartender to a party and hears a murder plot being hatched by her uncle. Unsure of its target or what exactly is going on, the chapter ends.

Line of the Day: “It was a scrubby land, without hedgerow or meadow; a country of stones, black heather, and stunted broom.” Pg 9

The Fact on the Fiction: In 1939, Alfred Hitchcock directed the movie adaptation of Jamaica Inn. IMDB