Jamaica Inn

I have always loved literary thriller queen Daphne Du Maurier's complex and resilient characters, and Mary Yellan is no exception. Everything’s looking pretty miserable for her after her mother’s death forces her to give up the family farm and her hometown to live in a creepy inn with her miserable aunt and aggressive drunk of an uncle.

So I really enjoy how brave and resourceful she is in getting past violence, danger, miserable living conditions, a desolate setting, and bad taste in men to find out whether something more sinister than smuggling is going on at the empty inn.   

Set in a time when women had little say over their lives, Mary strives to make the best out of a bad situation. 

The scenes are tense, always edged in danger (something I love to bring into my own books) and it is a masterpiece in drawing you into the murky dealings on these cornish moors. Then of course there is the slow-burning love story between Jem and Mary…

I live on the edge of Bodmin Moor not far from Jamaica Inn, I love the magic of the Cornish moors in Jamaica Inn, the endless bogs, misty tors, granite boulders, and wild abandon.

I rooted for Mary Yellan on her brave expeditions across the moors, I too like to take off and lose myself in their wild wonder. I enjoy the risky romance between Mary Yellan and Jem Merlyn and the obsessive darkness of Jamaica Inn with its cold-locked rooms and searing undercurrent of fear.

There is a contrasting mix of religion and criminality. You can almost smell the… show more.

Jamaica Inn is another grand literary role model, though it gave me a sense of something missing. It was too glamorous, too romanticised. The harsh underside of life needed more prominence. However, it narrative pace, sustained sense of drama and suspense cannot be faulted, can never fail as a creative catalyst.  

Off the Map is a tribute and to me the greatest tribute novel of all times is Jamaica Inn. It’s clearly a love letter from du Maurier to Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, but given a much greater darkness and gravity. She breathed la vie de la vérité into Bronte’s vision and in doing so became every bit as influential as Bronte did with her novel. You read Cormac McCarthy’s Outer Dark or Blood Meridian – there’s the pale-faced preacher as the leader of the mysterious trio and as Judge Holden, respectively. A tribute to a tribute. Amazing, beautiful,… show more.

Du Maurier is the master storyteller. Not only is she able to create a powerful and unsettling sense of place and atmosphere, but her stories are compelling and hook the reader from beginning to end. For me, it is all about the story, the ability to engage, enthrall, and entertain. I read so many books that are written in glorious prose, but very little happens, they’re all style over substance. They win prizes, but not the reader’s hearts. My primary goal is to write great stories, and the words are simply my means of doing this. Style should never get… show more.