, DAPHNE DU MAURIER
My Cousin Rachel is a psychological thriller by Daphne du Maurier that centers on the thin line separating love from suspicion. The narrator in the novel is Philip Ashley, a young man who has grown up under the guardianship of Ambrose on the family estate in Cornwall. Ambrose travels to Italy for health reasons and there marries a woman, Rachel, a beautiful and mysterious cousin whom Philip has never met.
Ambrose's death shortly thereafter, amidst the mysterious letters hinting perhaps at Rachel's implication in his decline, plunges Philip into a vortex of uncertainty and fixation. When Rachel finally visits Cornwall, Philip is mesmerized by her while suspecting her: torn between admiration for her charm and a growing belief that she may be responsible for his guardian's death.
As the story reveals itself, guilt and not-so-guilty lines further become very blurry; the emotions interlink with suspicion, going on to produce an indistinct, open kind of ending which can only help the readers muse about Rachel's real intentions, the reliability of Philip's narration not taken into account.
