From Utah State Prison to Bangkok...

In my final report my mentor said:

“I have recently re-read Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and suggest it might make a useful model for you as your novel has certain key features in common with it. Both novels revolve around a mysterious death in a family and feature the destructive power of jealousy, and both also attach great significance to a house as a metaphor for the site of conflict. Du Maurier uses a lot of circumstantial detail, but always as a means of creating a mood and building tension. If you do not already know the book … or have not read it for a long time, I urge you to read it with the aim of unpicking the way du Maurier tells her story.”

I have read it - as an adult because it was one of those gaps in my reading I was trying to fill in - but not recently enough to remember much about it (other than the opening line: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”) I certainly hadn’t made any connections to my own novel…

I finally found a second hand copy in Bangkok, at Dasa* books. It’s not a particularly nice copy: it has a tacky red silk background and small text (oh dear, how old I am getting) but it’s a copy. When I got it home I noticed that in a previous life it had resided at Timpanogos Library, Utah State Prison. I had a look at USP’s website and it looked a grim place. Not worse than any other prison and I’m not making any kind of statement about what it should or shouldn’t be like … but really, I hope some of the inmates enjoyed the book. There are notations by the text and passages underlined and it made me wonder if someone used it to study from…

I'm still wondering how it arrived in Thailand. More to the point, who did it and how did it escape the US prison system? Was it smuggled out?

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*BKK readers: Dasa books has moved... only a few doors down (past the posh piano shop) but don't assume it's closed down. Keep walking down Sukhumvit and you'll find it... and you may need to reward yourself with one of their chocolate brownies, served warm with cream....