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Apr. 27th, 2025 09:53 pmLast month ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
genarti and I were helping a friend move and noticed a stack of B-tier extremely pulp-styled Daphne du Maurier novels waiting to go into her bookshelf, which is why both of us ended up leaving that house with a B-tier pulp-styled Daphne du Maurier novel in our purse. genarti got Jamaica Inn, which she has not yet read, and I got The Scapegoat, which I have!
The protagonist of The Scapegoat is a sad and lonely professor who longs above all things to be French. He spends the first chapter wandering sadly around a French town thinking things like:
The smell of the soil, the gleam of the wet roads, the faded paint of shutters masking windows through which I should never look, the grey faces of houses whose doors I should never enter, were to me an everlasting reproach, a reminder of distance, of nationality. Others could force an entrance and break the barrier down; not I. I should never be a Frenchman, never be one of them.'
I'm not saying there are no situations in which I would be experiencing pathos here but I am afraid that for this poor professional English gentleman employed by the British museum, I simply experienced: comedy.
Anyway, UnFrench John is on his way to a weekend retreat at a monastery to contemplate the various failures of his life when he encounters that most wonderful of midcentury plot devices: A Completely Identical Stranger!
French Jean: My name is Jean and I am French! This is so wild! Tell me all about yourself!
UnFrench John: My name is John and I am not French! I am desperately lonely and have literally not a single person in my life who knows me well or cares about me.
French Jean: Dang, as someone who is having Big Family Problems let me tell you, UnFrench John, I would love to have not a single person in my life who knows me well or cares about me. That sounds like the ideal.
So French Jean takes UnFrench John out drinking, and then he takes UnFrench John back to his hotel room, and then gives him some more drinks, and long story short UnFrench John wakes up the next morning in French Jean's clothes with French Jean's chauffeur knocking on his door going 'did monsieur the count French Jean sleep well and is he ready to go back to his family estate?'
Because UnFrench John is the protagonist of a psychological thriller, he briefly considers the reasonable course of action (tell the truth, call the authorities, and find someone who remembers seeing Two Identical Guys at a restaurant yesterday) and then decides instead on a patently absurd course of action (go to French Jean's estate and pretend to be French Jean to French Jean's whole aristocratic family, for absolutely no reason except shits, giggles, and as aforementioned a deep-seated psychological longing to be part of a French family for some reason.)
Somehow this plan succeeds in spite of the fact that UnFrench John is simply incapable of rubbing two clues together. He is as genre-unsavvy as a babe in the woods. Despite the fact that French Jean dropped many a hint about Complicated Family Situations, UnFrench John is shocked, shocked! to discover that French Jean has a wife! and a daughter! and a mistress in town! and an unrelated active affair with his sister-in-law! which it takes UnFrench John almost a hundred pages to figure out, after she has met him in the hallway several times and said things like 'why did you not come to my CHAMBERS so we could be ALONE?'
UnFrench John is usually figuring things out about a hundred pages after I did, which is really my main frustration with the book.
( smallish midbook/setup spoilers )
To be clear, I do not mind UnFrench John making absolutely wild choices to maintain his deception for, again, no reason except his own psychological problems and also the psychological problems of the people around him. This is what I expect and want from a Daphne du Maurier novel. I am just offended by the fact that he is somehow managing to pull this off despite the fact that he's going about in a cloud of Math Lady Face. Sir if you are going to be undertaking a lengthy impersonation you have got to be more on the ball than this! Form a hypothesis for once in your life!
So, as far as books about Completely Identical Strangers go, this is no Brat Farrar or Ivy Tree. However! I have to admit: the ending of The Scapegoat kind of turned it around for me. I think the ending is brilliant and also extremely, extremely funny. ( full bore spoilers ahead! )
genarti and I were helping a friend move and noticed a stack of B-tier extremely pulp-styled Daphne du Maurier novels waiting to go into her bookshelf, which is why both of us ended up leaving that house with a B-tier pulp-styled Daphne du Maurier novel in our purse. genarti got Jamaica Inn, which she has not yet read, and I got The Scapegoat, which I have! The protagonist of The Scapegoat is a sad and lonely professor who longs above all things to be French. He spends the first chapter wandering sadly around a French town thinking things like:
The smell of the soil, the gleam of the wet roads, the faded paint of shutters masking windows through which I should never look, the grey faces of houses whose doors I should never enter, were to me an everlasting reproach, a reminder of distance, of nationality. Others could force an entrance and break the barrier down; not I. I should never be a Frenchman, never be one of them.'
I'm not saying there are no situations in which I would be experiencing pathos here but I am afraid that for this poor professional English gentleman employed by the British museum, I simply experienced: comedy.
Anyway, UnFrench John is on his way to a weekend retreat at a monastery to contemplate the various failures of his life when he encounters that most wonderful of midcentury plot devices: A Completely Identical Stranger!
French Jean: My name is Jean and I am French! This is so wild! Tell me all about yourself!
UnFrench John: My name is John and I am not French! I am desperately lonely and have literally not a single person in my life who knows me well or cares about me.
French Jean: Dang, as someone who is having Big Family Problems let me tell you, UnFrench John, I would love to have not a single person in my life who knows me well or cares about me. That sounds like the ideal.
So French Jean takes UnFrench John out drinking, and then he takes UnFrench John back to his hotel room, and then gives him some more drinks, and long story short UnFrench John wakes up the next morning in French Jean's clothes with French Jean's chauffeur knocking on his door going 'did monsieur the count French Jean sleep well and is he ready to go back to his family estate?'
Because UnFrench John is the protagonist of a psychological thriller, he briefly considers the reasonable course of action (tell the truth, call the authorities, and find someone who remembers seeing Two Identical Guys at a restaurant yesterday) and then decides instead on a patently absurd course of action (go to French Jean's estate and pretend to be French Jean to French Jean's whole aristocratic family, for absolutely no reason except shits, giggles, and as aforementioned a deep-seated psychological longing to be part of a French family for some reason.)
Somehow this plan succeeds in spite of the fact that UnFrench John is simply incapable of rubbing two clues together. He is as genre-unsavvy as a babe in the woods. Despite the fact that French Jean dropped many a hint about Complicated Family Situations, UnFrench John is shocked, shocked! to discover that French Jean has a wife! and a daughter! and a mistress in town! and an unrelated active affair with his sister-in-law! which it takes UnFrench John almost a hundred pages to figure out, after she has met him in the hallway several times and said things like 'why did you not come to my CHAMBERS so we could be ALONE?'
UnFrench John is usually figuring things out about a hundred pages after I did, which is really my main frustration with the book.
( smallish midbook/setup spoilers )
To be clear, I do not mind UnFrench John making absolutely wild choices to maintain his deception for, again, no reason except his own psychological problems and also the psychological problems of the people around him. This is what I expect and want from a Daphne du Maurier novel. I am just offended by the fact that he is somehow managing to pull this off despite the fact that he's going about in a cloud of Math Lady Face. Sir if you are going to be undertaking a lengthy impersonation you have got to be more on the ball than this! Form a hypothesis for once in your life!
So, as far as books about Completely Identical Strangers go, this is no Brat Farrar or Ivy Tree. However! I have to admit: the ending of The Scapegoat kind of turned it around for me. I think the ending is brilliant and also extremely, extremely funny. ( full bore spoilers ahead! )
