By Laura LaVelle, Wonder Shuffle Culture Editor:

Jamaica Inn Review

Jamaica Inn is an absolutely haunting gothic novel - but there's nothing supernatural here. Just the evil that men do. Mary Yellan, after her mother's death, fufills her promise to go live with her aunt.

Unfortunately for Mary (and even more so for her Aunt Patience), her uncle is horrendous and vicious, and her uncle's inn is miserable and desolate.

Her once-cheerful and beautiful aunt has become a shell of a person, and Mary soon finds herself surrounded by debauchery, domestic abuse, aloholism, the constant threat of sexual violence, and all manner of degradation.

The descriptions of the moors, the ruinous behavior of the inn's visitors, and the criminal enterprises she eventually learns about are astoundingly well-done.

BEWARE! SPOILER AHEAD!

TURN BACK NOW!

READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!

YOU ASKED FOR IT!

Mary, despite her youth and inexperience, remains remarkedly brave and steadfast in the face of these horrors.

The ending is bittersweet - Mary prevails and the criminals are undone, but at great cost. Her plans for the future at the book's end seem rather alarming and unwise, at least to this reader...but Mary's been underestimated before, and perhaps I'm underestimating her courage and resolution in the face of future adversity here.

She certainly doesn't seem to want an ordinary life, and chooses adventure over security.

I've never been, but Jamaica Inn is a real place- - du Maurier stayed there in the 1930s.

She cast back over a hundred years prior to create this historical fiction, after hearing local stories of smuggling and ship-wrecking. (The part about getting lost on the moors on a rainy evening were based on her own terrifying experience on an unfortunate outing with a friend. We should all be quite glad they made it back to safety - -this classic book is the result.)

About Me

Laura LaVelle is Wonder Shuffle's Culture Editor. A fan of the great indoors, you can find her in her native NYC, her home in Connecticut, or at a concert, play, library, bookstore, or museum just about anywhere in the world.

NOVEL: Jamaica Inn

AUTHOR: Daphne du Maurier

YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 1936

IMAGE: book cover, Back Bay Books