Rebecca

⚖The case for it

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." Du Maurier's gothic masterpiece, in which a nameless narrator is haunted by her husband's first wife, invented the psychological domestic thriller. The house, the dead woman, the sinister housekeeper Mrs. Danvers: all iconic. A perennial favorite among readers who don't think they read crime.

— the canon

✕The case against

Once Maxim confesses, the book asks something strange of you: that the narrator's response to her husband killing his first wife is joy that he never loved her, and that you share it. Du Maurier gets away with it through sheer atmosphere. She also borrows the Jane Eyre floor plan down to the burning house, and the middle stretch at Manderley idles.

— the honest librarian