The Scapegoat (Virago Modern Classics)

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From the neglected pregnant wife and the hostile elder sister to the resentful younger brother and the religious ten-year-old daughter, every character is well-drawn and memorable.

Oh and that’s just the beginning…he inherits a precocious 11-year old daughter, a sister-in-law (who he is having an affair with), a valet, a mistress, a glass factory that is floundering… And given this is a du Maurier novel there have been sinister things happening well into the past…that this Englishman now fake Frenchman is going to have to deal with. Suspecting suicide, John learns from Jean's mother that Françoise knew of Jean's affairs and feared that the family all wanted her out of the way; Marie-Noel's disappearance (an apparent sign that she had turned against Françoise) was the last straw.If the second Mrs de Winter gets an “identity crisis” and is subconsciously mistaken for another, with one person allegedly wanting to believe she is another person, John in The Scapegoat also finds himself in a position where people around him take him for someone else, imposing their identity perception on him. You will need to seriously suspend disbelief for this story as it’s highly implausible and yet it had me intrigued from start to finish. He learns how his doppelgänger had influenced the destinies of these individuals, mercilessly twisting their lives to his own purpose. I really wasn't expecting to get completely hooked to this story, but after a certain point that was exactly what happened and I didn't care about anything other than what was going to happen next at St. I don’t remember which book I read first, but I remember that I was captivated, and that I picked up another, and another, and another ….

Jean, on the other hand, describes himself as a "family man" who evidently doesn't enjoy the title and is only too happy to jump ship. In The Scapegoat, her ancestral glass-blowing foundry became the failing business of the de Gué family.But the question that really bugs me is why doesn’t anyone seem to notice that he’s not Jean – not his brother, his mother or even his wife and child? There, he sees his doppelgänger Jean de Gué and the latter quickly decides to change places with the “free” Englishman. This is the point where the story takes a fairly unlikely turn (if it hadn’t already) in that John decides to live Jean’s life, moving in with his family and picking up the loose threads of the life Jean had left behind. Minor issues present such as mild cracking, inscriptions, inserts, light foxing, tanning and thumb marking. When he acts out of a redemptive motivation, you begin to think his plans might work and improve matters.

Daphne du Maurier was born on 13 May 1907 at 24 Cumberland Terrace, Regent's Park, London, the middle of three daughters of prominent actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and actress Muriel, née Beaumont. As with many of Daphne du Maurier's novels, there are so many elements of mystery that it is sometimes rather like reading a detective story. I think even the most skeptical readers can suspend disbelief, in this masterfully written fiction novel), . There's a fair amount of suspension of disbelief that is required on the part of the reader, but du Maurier is so skilled at engaging us, there were very few times that I stopped or scratched my head. Throughout the book, I was forced to revise my opinions once or twice about what was really going on.A dozen years have passed since the Occupation and there is still friction between those who were members of the Resistance and the collaborators. I haven’t read “The Birds” (only watched Hitchcock’s very loose adaptation), but her short story “Don’t Look Now” is on my TBR list and I expect a lot from it. When she wrote about the character Françoise needing a blood transfusion, in real life shortly afterwards, her daughter Tessa gave birth to a son who needed two blood transfusions. One weird thing I noticed was that the language read in a slightly stilted way I’ve noticed before with DdM which reminds me very much of the translation of Alain-Fournier’s “Le Grand Meaulnes” – more obvious here as it also treats ancient chateaux in the French countryside.