Product Description

On a bitter November evening, young Mary Yellan journeys across the rainswept moors to Jamaica Inn in honour of her mother's dying request. When she arrives, the warning of the coachman begins to echo in her memory, for her aunt Patience cowers before hulking Uncle Joss Merlyn. Terrified of the inn's brooding power, Mary gradually finds herself ensnared in the dark schemes being enacted behind its crumbling walls -- and tempted to love a man she dares not trust.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7867 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
'Daphne du Maurier has no equal' Sunday Telegraph 'A true classic' Amazon.com

The Times
Jamaica Inn is a first-rate page-turner.'

About the Author
Daphne du Maurier, daughter of the famous actor- manager Sir Gerald du Maurier, was born in London and educated at home and in Paris. Most of her novels have been bestsellers and many of them have been made into film. She died in 1989.

Customer Reviews

Brooding, mysterious, brilliant...
I defy anyone not to be gripped by the opening chapter where the heroine, Mary Yellan is travelling to Jamaica Inn by stagecoach on a winter's night battling the wind and rain. Like her other books Du Maurier draws the setting, Bodmin Moor in Cornwall brilliantly and this coupled with a feisty heroine and a giant rogue of a villain in her uncle, the landlord of Jamaica Inn all make for a great read. The Inn itself, hinted at early on as being a sinister place, does not disappoint and I was totally drawn into the dark goings on as Mary slowly unravels its secrets and that of her uncle.
Rebecca is better but this is still an excellent book and will keep you hooked to the twistingly brilliant ending. Faultless writing by, in my opinion, the master storyteller.

Passionate romance set in Victorian Cornwall
Like Wuthering Heights, the scenery and setting in this brooding book are extremely important, creating and refelcting mood. Here, rather than the Yorkshire Moors, it's Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. Within these bleak and hostile moors sits the solitary and isolated inn of the title (still there in real life), presided over by the frightening and cruel drunkard, Joss Merlyn. But is he the real villain, or is he just being used by an even more powerful force?

What I particulalty like about this book is that it's set in Victorian times, reads very much like a Victiorian novel, but is not blunted by that era's strict censorship (Jamaica Inn was published in the - slightly- freer 1930s). Mary and Jem actually do frolic quite suggestively, despite not being married, and this behaviour is not damned by the narrative.

It is interesting that Hitchcock made films of three Du Maurier works. As well as Jamaica Inn, The Birds and Rebecca are also based on her stories. He must have been a fan.

Yo ho ho
Jamaica Inn is not in the same league as "Rebecca" and some of the actions of the heroine seem slightly unlikely. However the descriptions of Bodmin Moor are evocative and the relatively straight forward plot makes for a good page turner especially suitable for a Cornwallian holiday. One word of warning though - I would not read the introduction until afterwards as it gives too much away; why publishers do this I do not know!