A woman got on near Twyford, saw the cover, and did not stop talking for eleven minutes.

She sat down opposite, looked at the cover for a while, and then:

"Oh, you're on that one. Is it your first go?"

Yes.

"How far?"

Manderley's burning, I said. I've just got to the burning.

"Then you know nothing yet. Go back and read the first two pages again. Go on, afterwards. It's all sitting in there and you won't have seen a bit of it."

I said I had found the narrator quite hard going, all that flinching.

"She's twenty-one and nobody has ever asked her a question in her life. Of course she flinches."

Fair.

"It's Danvers, though. She's who it's for. She's the only person in that house who is actually grieving and this book will not let her have it."

She got off before I could ask her name. I did go back and read the first two pages again and she was completely right: the whole thing is sitting there in the dream, including the bit I had assumed was symbolic and isn't.

Eight. I have since found out Du Maurier didn't much care for being called a romantic novelist, and having read it I can see why. The marriage in this is a hostage situation with nicer curtains.