Dave Schaafsma's Reviews > Frenchman's Creek

I had no idea what this book was about when I decided to listen to it but I knew Daphne du Maurier was a good writer. She wrote Rebecca, and "The Birds," the basis for Hitchcock's film So Frenchman's Creek (1941) is historical fiction, a romantic adventure set in the seventeenth century. I understand du Maurier found an old house in Cornwall, and it ignited her imagination.

Dona is an aristocrat, married, with two kids, living in London. Hubby drinks too much, gambles too much, and travels everywhere, is not bright or engaging, leaving Dona home, bored. She wants to live. While he is gone for an extended trip she takes the kids and a governess to this exotic place on the river, where she one day meets. . . . A PIRATE!

But he's not just any pirate, not scuzzy and foul and crude, but a man who is well educated, reads poetry, is a gourmet cook, and likes adventure. You can see how this book might have been popular in the sixties; said pirate drops out of society to captain a ship and rob the rich and gives a portion (say, a tithe) to the poor. Oh, and of course he is handsome and exciting and loving, where tubby hubby is dull and selfish.

They fall in love, duh. Like now. Like yesterday, already. He teaches her to fish, in her petticoats and expensive ruby earrings. And she participates in an actual robbery of a ship, cool! Adventure! And when the hubby and his gambling and drinking pals come to capture the pirate and hang him, dressed as a cabin boy, well, more adventure! And not much of any reference to actual sex, as this is 1941, but it is romantic adventure, use your imagination, it's even better.

Points to du Maurier for making it (somewhat) difficult to approve of this story. While she is off adventuring--with the first and only love of her life, we learn--she leaves the kids with the governess, feigning illness. Hmm. She coulda made it easier for us to approve of the affair by making her childless, but nope she takes a more difficult way, and I like that. But hey, let's forget about those pesky kids for awhile, this is ADVENTURE!

I guess I won't give away what happens in the very end, but I found it surprisingly entertaining fun. Literary romance, well-written! And romance, not realism, with a touch of feminism, you might call it, since in the seventeenth century or even 1941 you would have a difficult time as a woman becoming a pirate, argghhhh!