Why Rebecca is a brilliant book

No spoilers. 
1/ Rebecca is interesting from the premise: a young, naïve, inexperienced, and socially awkward woman marries a rich widower twice her age and moves to his mansion Manderley, only to find the phantom of his previous wife Rebecca in every corner of the house, and find herself inferior to Rebecca in every way. 
But it’s not only about the premise, the execution is very good. Look at this passage for example: 

“She was in the house still, as Mrs. Danvers had said; she was in that room in the west wing, she was in the library, in the morning room, in the gallery above the hall. Even in the little flower room, where her mackintosh still hung. And in the garden, and in the woods, and down in the stone cottage on the beach. Her footsteps sounded in the corridors, her scent lingered on the stairs. The servants obeyed her orders still, the food we ate was the food she liked. Her favorite flowers filled the rooms. Her clothes were in the wardrobes in her room, her brushes were on the table, her shoes beneath the chair, her nightdress on her bed. Rebecca was still mistress of Manderley. Rebecca was still Mrs. de Winter. I had no business here at all. I had come blundering like a poor fool on ground that was preserved. 
[…] Rebecca, always Rebecca. I should never be rid of Rebecca.
[…] I could fight the living but I could not fight the dead. If there was some woman in London that Maxim loved, someone he wrote to, visited, dined with, slept with, I could fight with her. We would stand on common ground. I should not be afraid. Anger and jealousy were things that could be conquered. One day the woman would grow old or tired or different, and Maxim would not love her anymore. But Rebecca would never grow old. Rebecca would always be the same. And her I could not fight. She was too strong for me.” (Ch.18) 

2/ Daphne du Maurier, at least in Rebecca (I haven’t read other works), is a visual writer. Here and there some readers complain about the book being over-descriptive (I don’t understand, but people can complain about anything), but she describes everything in vivid detail, and makes the scenery and buildings become real, especially Manderley. Readers can not only see the places she describes, but can also feel them and hear them and smell them.  
Look at this—example of a scenery: 

“Jasper barked as we ran together. He thought it was some new kind of game. He kept trying to bite the belt and worry it. I had not realized how closely the trees grew together here, their roots stretching across the path like tendrils ready to trip one. They ought to clear all this, I thought as I ran, catching my breath, Maxim should get the men onto it. There is no sense or beauty in this undergrowth. That tangle of shrubs there should be cut down to bring light to the path. It was dark, much too dark. That naked eucalyptus tree stifled by brambles looked like the white bleached limb of a skeleton, and there was a black earthy stream running beneath it, choked with the muddied rains of years, trickling silently to the beach below. The birds did not sing here as they did in the valley. It was quiet in a different way. And even as I ran and panted up the path I could hear the wash of the sea as the tide crept into the cove. I understood why Maxim disliked the path and the cove. I disliked it too. I had been a fool to come this way. I should have stayed on the other beach, on the white shingle, and come home by the Happy Valley.” (Ch.13) 

This is the cottage: 

“The windows were boarded up. No doubt the door was locked, and I lifted the latch without much hope. To my surprise it opened after the first stiffness, and I went inside, bending my head because of the low door. I expected to find the usual boat store, dirty and dusty with disuse, ropes and blocks and oars upon the floor. The dust was there, and the dirt too in places, but there were no ropes or blocks. The room was furnished, and ran the whole length of the cottage. There was a desk in the corner, a table, and chairs, and a bed-sofa pushed against the wall. There was a dresser too, with cups and plates. Bookshelves, the books inside them, and models of ships standing on the top of the shelves. For a moment I thought it must be inhabited--perhaps the poor man on the beach lived here--but I looked around me again and saw no sign of recent occupation. That rusted grate knew no fire, this dusty floor no footsteps, and the china there on the dresser was blue-spotted with the damp. There was a queer musty smell about the place. Cobwebs spun threads upon the ships' models, making their own ghostly rigging. No one lived here. No one came here. The door had creaked on its hinges when I opened it. The rain pattered on the roof with a hollow sound, and tapped upon the boarded windows. The fabric of the sofa-bed had been nibbled by mice or rats. I could see the jagged holes, and the frayed edges. It was damp in the cottage, damp and chill. Dark, and oppressive.” (Ch.10) 

Daphne du Maurier’s also very good at creating atmosphere and building tension. The confrontation between the narrator and Mrs Danvers (which involves the window) is among the greatest scenes in literature. 

3/ Rebecca may be marketed as a romantic novel, but it isn’t. 
As the author said it herself, Rebecca is a study in jealousy. To the unnamed narrator, Rebecca appears perfect—beautiful, charming, well-dressed, accomplished, athletic, popular with everyone, and superior to her in everything. The narrator’s jealous of her husband’s previous wife to the point of obsession. For the whole book, she struggles with jealousy and with her own identity. 
We must also speak of Mrs Danvers’s jealousy—she’s jealous of the narrator, for being alive, for taking “her lady’s” place and being referred to as Mrs de Winter. She’s the one who keeps Rebecca alive by preserving her morning room and bedroom like a shrine, and making sure that nothing at Manderley is changed after Rebecca’s death. She’s the one who haunts and plays with the narrator, and reminds her of her inferiority. 

4/ Rebecca reminds me of The Sound and the Fury. Similar to Caddy, Rebecca never appears, never speaks—she is dead before the story begins, and because the book’s narrated by the new wife, there is no flashback. But Rebecca is full of life even in death, she takes over Manderley, she takes over the book, and the title, pushing the narrator to a corner, turning her into a phantom, a ghost. Rebecca is vivid, haunting, unforgettable. 

5/ The book is not black and white, and can be interpreted in multiple ways (see earlier post). The characters are complex and multi-faceted.  
Who, we may ask, is the villain in the book? An easy, universally acknowledged answer is Mrs Danvers, the housekeeper. However, she is not a 2-dimensional character, she is humanised near the end of the book. She hates, she cries, she grieves—she may be mean to the narrator indeed, but if we look at it from her point of view, we understand. Some of us even understand her act of destruction at the end of Rebecca. 
Mrs Danvers isn’t the only villain. The other one would be either Rebecca or Maxim, or both, depending on how you interpret the book.   

I hope you’ll read the book. I rarely feel so passionate about a book, and usually keep it to myself, but I’ve been trying to get everyone to read Rebecca. 
It’s a brilliant, enjoyable read.