The Scapegoat (Virago Modern Classics)

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I don’t fancy all of them, but I’d put this up there with Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel and above Jamaica Inn which was a bit too disturbing for me! I don’t think I ever reviewed this one but I really like it and persuaded my book group to read it about five years ago, which was a reread for me. Most significantly he has to wonder if he is playing the part of Jean, if he is becoming Jean, and if John can influence Jean and shape a different future. He's a lonely man without a family who is thinking of joining a monastery to find meaning in his life.

What would they think if they knew he was just a stranger playing at being their son, husband, father, brother, lover or master? One of the triggers was that while out for a walk in a square in a French town, Daphne du Maurier saw a man who looked identical to someone she happened to know. There is a bit of an anticlimax at the end, and du Maurier did not quite manage to suspend our disbelief completely regarding this situation of two compete look alikes, who speak different languages, not only meeting but then one’s family mistaking a stranger for its own family member, inviting him home. Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, the narrator finds himself in another world; a world that he finds curiouser and curiouser.possessed by a reckless feeling I had never known before, the sensation that I myself did not matter any more. I think the hair on the back of my neck would stand up if I walked into a pub and sat down next to a clone of myself. It lies somewhere between the two, yet is also an unsettling tale, full of suspense, sometimes even having a dream-like quality.

The story has been the basis of two films: one in 1959 starring Alec Guinness and Bette Davis and one in 2012 starring Matthew Rhys. When John wakes the next morning, stripped of his own clothes and everything he had on his person, what choice does he have but to put on another man’s clothes, take his suitcase and assume this new life? Someone jolted my elbow as I drank and said 'Je sous demande pardon," and as I moved to give him space he turned and stared at me and I at him, and I realized with a strange sense of shock and fear and nausea all combined, that his face and voice were known to me too well.Thus none of the French associations are there, and in fact the story is entirely different, with different characters, different major and critical episodes - and even a different ending! Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thoughts on Papyrus with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. How lovely to have got to this one so early and had the chance to re-read it often – I love tales of re-reading, and how books change as we change. I think the author's aim was to show how a person, unavoidably, changes the atmosphere around him or her, especially when he or she changes his/her behaviour patterns. Next thing he knows, he’s been duped, tricked and drugged and is faced with the temptation of taking on a different person’s life – someone with a full life, living in a chateau with a large extended family, but also someone who turns out to be Not Very Nice, having led an idle life of minor cruelties, complete with wife and two mistresses, not engaging in the family firm; a wastrel.